Each professional discipline has a responsibility to identify concepts that provide a general description of the discipline. It is these concepts that comprise the profession’s metaparadigm (Fawcett, 1984). Much of the philosophy and theory of nursing stems from the work of Florence Nightingale. The diaries, letters, and books that she left behind containing her statements and beliefs have been fundamental to the development of the concepts comprising the nursing metaparadigm (Selanders, 2010). Fawcett’s (1984) stated there was a general consensus among scholars that the concepts of nursing were person, environment, health, and nursing.
Some researchers have suggested that other concepts should be added to the nursing metaparadigm. For …show more content…

Nursing
Nursing may be direct patient care or teaching. Nursing is defined as the actions taken by nurses to assist the patient in reaching a particular goal or outcome (Fawcett, 1996). Nurses promote good health through teaching people how to prevent disease, to promote healing, and to ease suffering. The goal of nursing is for the patient to be in the best condition possible to promote healing (Selanders, 2010). In the past, nursing referred to treatment provided by a nurse to a patient but now the concept of nursing extends beyond the hospital, out into the community and to society as a whole. The actions of a nurse is a systematic process, it includes assessment and making a nursing diagnosis that is much broader than the type of diagnosis a patient would receive from a physician. The process then requires the planning and implementation of actions and concludes with an evaluation of the process carried out (Potter & Perry, 1997).
To provide an example of nursing from my own practice should be an easy task, as it is what I do every day. However, to condense what I do into a couple sentences is quite difficult. The nursing that I do requires me to walk into a patient’s room in the morning to complete my initial assessment. I check their vital signs, as well as blood work and alert the physician of anything that needs to be addressed. I facilitate the involvement of other disciplines (e.g., social work, physiotherapy or the dietitian). I make sure the