Professional Outlook Project
Philosophy Intro Page
NURS 314: Principles of Practice: Foundational Concepts
Assignment Purpose
This project provides the junior level student with an opportunity to define his/her philosophy of nursing in the early phases of education and professionalization. In the spirit of life-long learning inherent to the practice of nursing, the student will also explore and describe his/her goals for higher level nursing education. As required for the Senior year portfolio, the student can use this project to look back and reflect upon the values, understandings, ambiguities, and personal experiences that have changed or held steadfast throughout his/her undergraduate nursing education and their influence on the transition to the professional nurse role.
Approach to Assignment
My approach to this assignment was to formulate a personal definition of nursing inspired by theoretical concepts within the field and develop a philosophy of nursing to guide my practice. Specifically, I discuss my appreciation for Faye Glenn Abdellah’s Patient Oriented Approach Theory and its applications for guiding person-oriented care: my care should be focused on treating the person and not simply the clinical manifestations of the disease process. In this professional outlook project, I examine what that person-oriented care looks like through the four nursing metaparadigm interconnected concepts: person, environment, health, and nursing and analyze how intersectionality and the social determinants of health (SDOH) impact care outcomes.
Reason for Inclusion
Domain 2: Person-Centered Care. Implements nursing care practices as appropriate to provide holistic health care to diverse populations across the lifespan.
In this project, I examine how racial disparities influence healthcare utilization, patient outcomes, and morbidity and mortality across the lifespan, from pediatric patients to perioperative total joint arthroplasty (TJA) patients.
I discuss how factors such as reliable transportation to medical appointments and prescription pickup services can mitigate some of these outcomes represents a shift away from the medical model to nursing-oriented holistic care approaches.
Domain 3: Population Health. Evaluates nursing care outcomes through the acquisition of data and the questioning of inconsistencies.
The historical and sociocultural context of Linnaeus’s racial classification system had detrimental impacts that, along with the theoretical frameworks of Nightingale, continue to influence modern healthcare (Davis et all, 2024). In this project, I highlight some of the real health outcomes resulting from this encoding.
Domain 4: Scholarship for the Nursing Discipline. Applies research-based knowledge from nursing as the basis for culturally sensitive practice.
This project discusses how nurses should assess the social and environmental determinants of health as a means of identifying the patient’s nonmedical needs, understanding their motivations, and ultimately aligning the plan of care for the disease process so that holistic nursing care is provided. This aligns with the evidence-base practice of integrative nursing principles (Gözüm & Ilgaz, 2022).
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). (n.d.). Domains & Concepts. The essentials. https://www.aacnnursing.org/essentials/tool-kit/domains-concept
Davis, S., Martin-Holland, J., & Mitchell, D.A. (2024). An antiracism framework for educating nursing professionals. Nursing Outlook, 72(5) 102242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2024.102242
Gözüm, S., & Ilgaz, A. (2022). Applying integrative nursing principles to practice: An example from theory to practice. Journal of Education and Research in Nursing, 19(3) 362-370. https://pdf.journalagent.com/jern/pdfs/JERN_19_3_362_370.pdf