Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale is known as the founder of modern nursing. Her contributions and influence not only to the nursing profession, but to the public health care system, is unparalleled. She was instrumental in establishing multiple processes and practices that are still in current practice. She has influenced many nursing theorist and prevailing theories during her career. Many of her changes continue to influence theory development today.

With that in mind, my personal definition of nursing, although quite impossible to define, would be the science and art of providing holistic care to a client; physically, mentally, physiologically, spiritually and emotionally. I firmly believe that nursing care is not solely confined to an individual as nursing care tend to extend beyond the patient to family members and friends who care about their loved one. There are very few definitions out there that would capture the essence of my role in nursing, and I would entrust myself to repeat my

I think nursing not only includes taking care of patients and helping out the doctors. I believe that there is some art to nursing as well, other than all the education and science involved of course. I believe that that caring is the essence of nursing, and that it should be viewed by the nurses as their moral ideal of preserving human dignity. This is to be done by helping the patients in finding some deeper meaning to their illnesses and suffering so that they are able to understand themselves better and are able to restore and promote their personal harmony and balance between the mind, body, and soul. Thus, I

In order to decide on an accurate and well-described definition of what nursing is I sought multiple sources and decided upon two that I feel are representative of nursing. The American Nurses Association (ANA, 2015) declares, “Nursing is the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, communities, and populations.” As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2015)

I realized I wanted to be a nurse after I had my 2nd ACL surgery, my senior year of high school. I had to stay in the hospital 3 days in order to recover, and I was very lucky to have such a wonderful and caring nurse. She made me feel as if I was her only patient. I will never forget how well I was taken care of and how comfortable she made me feel. I was young and scared, but she was reassuring, because she made me feel as if I had my own mother taking care of me. She was the reason I wanted to become a nurse, because I wanted to make others feel the way she made me feel. My personal definition of nursing is encompassed within that one nurse. A nurse should be loving, compassionate, dependable, competent, empathic, responsible,

What nursing is defined as in my opinion, is more of a philosophy. I see nursing as a combination of beliefs and ideals that revolve around the concepts of compassion, integrity, and sacrifice. I have always viewed nurses as caring and compassionate towards their patents. There is a quality in their personalities in that they truly care about who they are working with. Nurses are also ones who can be trusted, as you know that they regard their job to the highest degree. Nurses will not compromise, and will do whatever necessary to ensure the health of their patients. Sacrifice is another concept I associate with nursing. Nurses put their patients above themselves and will gladly go out of their way to ensure their wellness. If I had

A nursing philosophy is the thoughts and beliefs about the job of a nurse based on one’s values. My values that have formed over the years have influenced me to purse a forever career as a nurse. I grew up in a small town Smithfield, Pennsylvania with my parents and younger brother. My community consisted of close relationships between the residents. Every one helped and cared for one another when needed. The practices of my community guided me to want to become a nurse. I want to continue to care for my community and give back to them by treating their illnesses and providing them with better health care. I am particularly interested in caring for pediatric patients. My goal is to try to provide every infant a chance to live their beautiful life created for them by God. While doing this, the primary focus of being a nurse will be to accommodate my patients and allow them to become a healthy person again.

My personal definition of nursing would be getting your patient to the highest level of health you can in your time with them while incorporating their family, environment, and beliefs/culture with a high level of critical thinking at all times. The American Nursing Association defines it as “the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, communities, and populations” (ANA, 2012). The quality of nursing care can be the difference in life and death. Nurses provide the backbone of care to the patients’ and serve as the main

Florence Nightingale is known as the pioneer of nursing and evidence- based health care. Many believe that she was the founder of what we call modern nursing today. During her time as a nurse she had founded her school of nursing at St. Thomas Hospital in 1860 as well she wrote many nursing books such as Notes on Nursing wrote in

Cherry and Jacob state that Nightingale “introduced principles of asepsis and infection control, a system for transcribing physician’s orders, and a procedure to maintain patient records” (Cherry & Jacob, 2014, p. 8). Florence Nightingale also established the first nursing school in 1860 at the St. Thomas’ Hospital of London (Cherry & Jacob, 2014). Not only is Nightingale the founder of professional nursing, she is also recognized for contributing to nursing research, involvement in political activism, and for her establishment to provide formal nursing education to pursing nurses (Cherry & Jacob, 2014).

The profession of nursing has matured from the time of Florence Nightingale. Nursing has gone from just treating dying soldiers on the battlefield to helping guide people through their entire lives from birth to death. The maturation of nursing has led to changes in nursing philosophy and allowed for practitioners of Nursing to meld these philosophies together to form their own philosophy. In this paper I will explain my philosophy of nursing and compare it to Virginia Henderson 's definition of nursing along with discussing some of the changes to Nurse philosophy I will also discuss some of the difficulties to being a patient advocate.

Theory is a cluster of concept or ideas that propose a view concerning a phenomenon to guide nursing practice (Chitty, 2005). The four concepts basic to nursing that are incorporated in this paper are nursing, person, health, and environment (Cherry & Jacob, 2005). The goal of this paper is to describe the core concept of nursing shared amongst Dorothea Orem and Virginia Henderson’s theories. The comparison and analysis of concept definitions between these two theories will also examined. Finally Henderson’s theory of concept statement, metaparadigm and her philosophy will be explored.

Florence Nightingale, a well-educated nurse, was recruited along with 38 other nurses for service in a hospital called Scutari during the Crimean War in 1854 . It was Nightingale's approaches to nursing that produced amazing results. Florence Nightingale was responsible for crucial changes in hospital protocol, a new view on the capabilities and potential of women, and the creation of a model of standards that all future nurses could aspire towards.

Nursing is universal in the sense that nurses can be found almost in all countries around the world (Henderson, 1978). They are in the hospitals, in school clinics, in the community centres, residential homes and even play major roles in some of the popular soap operas in television. There are even television shows that mainly revolve around nurses and which chronicles what they do at work - both the positive and the negative. It is one of the most visible and easily identifiable occupations as compared for example to other occupations such as engineers, managers or even pharmacists, medical technologists and other health related occupations. This is partly because of what nurses do and most especially how nurses look - with some still

Nursing is defined and referred to as both an art and a science through theory and research in nursing practice. Although the science of nursing is grounded on the acquirement of knowledge and skills, along with theoretical understanding of nursing, but it is also described as ‘an experience lived between human beings’.