Personal Worldview

NUR 513 Essay: Personal Worldview

Personal worldview encompasses basic assumptions and concepts people have of the world. Personal worldviews offer structure to people’s thoughts and influence their actions. Personal worldviews might offer answers to core issues, including finding meaning and purpose in life, perception of good and evil, and the belief in a higher power. Personal worldview accounts for the majority of a person’s identity, including their political identity. Worldviews are highly dependent on religion, culture, and spirituality. This paper discusses personal worldview, a nursing theory that aligns with the personal worldview, examples in practice in relation to the personal worldview and nursing theory, and how the worldview and the nursing theory can help future practice development.

Personal Worldview

Personal Worldview

My personal worldview is greatly influenced by Christianity, family values and practices, life experience, and the American culture. Christianity is central to my personal values, beliefs, and practices, and my spirituality is based on the Christian faith and doctrine. There is a definite way Christians view things, which possesses character, coherence, and unity and sharply contrasts with other religions, theories, and speculations (Dockery et al., 2022). The Christian worldview influences my reasoning and view of reality. The Christian worldview is founded on a universal principle, and it is all-embracing, shaping other multiple fields, including law, history, arts, humanities, social sciences, and the general application in life. I have applied the Christian worldview all my life, including across the educational curriculum, given that I was born in a Christian family. The Christian worldview challenges how I view the truth and morality, and interpret frameworks, including the teaching of Christ. As a Christian, I am expected to love others, which is considered the Greatest Commandment, as I love myself with all my heart, soul, and mind because God’s love for people is unconditional (Rieg et al., 2019). I follow Jesus’ footsteps, striving to embrace his life on earth, including loving His enemies. Loving others unconditionally has been instrumental in shaping my relationship with others, including patients and colleagues at the practice site. I am also taught to care for others and extend a helping hand where I can. I adopt these principles when caring for patients, treating everyone with dignity and respect.

My spirituality entails faith, meaning in life, belonging, forgiveness, and connectedness, which are highly influenced by the Christina faith. I have struggled sometimes to find meaning in life, experiencing spiritual distress, but I find comfort within the confines of Christian teachings and principles. I adopt my spirituality to relieve suffering from others and self, especially patients who indicate signs of spiritual distress (Wisconsin Technical College, 2023). Christianity embraces everyone and stresses Christians love their neighbors, which makes it possible to utilize my spirituality to empower another individual’s spirituality, even when it’s different from mine without conflict (Dockery et al., 2022). The basic principles of my spirituality are treating everyone with inherent dignity, respect, and worth, which is applicable across all forms of spirituality. My spirituality allows me to treat others compassionately and provide holistic care, including physical, emotional, social, religious, and spiritual well-being.

Cultural elements in my worldview have roots in my family background, which is also Christian. My parents taught me to respect others and treat everyone indifferently. These aspects have been significant in helping me develop and experience relationships with self, family, friends, colleagues, patients, community, and nature. The cultural values and practices learned from my family have shaped how I view the world, places to find meaning in life, understanding of suffering, illness, and life in general, and developing vision and mission for my life. I intend to continue utilizing these aspects of religion, spirituality, and culture in practice and patient care.

Nursing Theory that Aligns with Personal Philosophy

Jean Watson’s Theory of Human Caring aligns with my personal philosophy of practice and approach to patient care. I adopt this theory as it embraces the positive energy flow from an intertwined mind, body, and spirit, which is mutually rewarding to the healthcare provider and the patient. The theory stresses that the nurse’s central role is to be at the heart of healing, maintaining an authentic presence and intentionality to optimize the patient’s capacity to heal from within (Gunawan et al., 2022). The theory, just like my personal philosophy, stresses the need for holistic care, which involves catering for the patient’s physical, emotional, psychological, religious, and spiritual needs (Nikfarid et al., 2019). It guides me in maintaining emotional sensitivity and a caring attitude in an overly demanding and stressful workplace.

I value caring for others because it helps regenerate life energies that potentiate my compassion capacity. Caring for others also helps me toward self-actualization, individually and professionally, which is also a concept of the theory of human caring. I am selfless, but I also understand that to care for others effectively, I should embrace self-care, which Watson’s theory promotes. It encourages nurses to practice self-healing by adopting self-care strategies to rejuvenate their energies and replenish the spiritual bank (Gunawan et al., 2022). Conclusively, most of the principles of human caring align with my personal philosophy in nursing practice and reinforce my approach to care.

A Specific Example of a Past Practice and How My Worldview and The Nursing Theory Could Assist Me in Resolving This Issue

My life experiences impact my personal philosophy and view of the world. My life has been eventful, and one particular example I would use would be watching a patient’s health deteriorate on my watch even after adopting almost entirely available interventions. It does not happen often, but I have had these experiences severally throughout my career. Such an example included a patient who presented with symptoms of kidney failure and abdominal edema. The patient experienced excess swelling as the kidney was unable to remove the excess fluid from the body. The condition was significant, and we started the patient on medication to help alleviate the edema. It was impossible to carry out a biopsy before addressing the excessive swelling. However, as the patient received treatment, she experienced more complications, including blood clots that made her veins swell and body unable to maintain optimal potassium and phosphorus levels. This experience was distressing, and I developed a feeling of inadequacy because there is nothing we did seemed to work. In such cases of distress, my Christian worldview is fundamental as it helps alleviate the distress and maintain a positive attitude, giving the patient hope for a better outcome. The human caring theory requires nurses to be present emotionally and maintain intentionality, which is integral in helping the patient heal from within (Gunawan et al., 2022). These principles would encourage me to be there for the patient regardless of her response to treatment.

How My Worldview and The Nursing Theory Will Assist in Further Developing my Future Practice

My primary goals as a nurse are to provide quality care to patients, optimize current patient care approaches and practices, and advocate for more holistic and individualized patient care. These goals call for high moral values, a positive attitude, compassion, respect for patients and colleagues, and individual discipline, principles I can borrow from my personal philosophy. To advocate for patients, a nurse must be empathetic, compassionate, and caring. A nurse must be present emotionally and physically to understand patient needs to promote care that centers on these needs and support them through their difficult journey. The theory of human caring will help actualize these goals as it provides principles that promote human caring, including practicing loving kindness with self and others, inspiring and honoring others, nurturing individual beliefs, listening authentically, accepting positive and negative feelings, and creating a healing environment (Gunawan et al., 2022). I also expect to continue developing my career readiness and professional experience. Continuing education is integral in improving patient care practice. I will continue to embrace my personal philosophy, which is highly guided by the Christian worldview, and Jean Watson’s theory of human caring in my current and future practice.

Conclusion

Personal worldview provides a structure of reasoning and action and influences relationships in the practice environment. I base my personal philosophy on Christian worldview and faith and family values I learned from my parents. Jean Watson’s theory significantly aligns with my personal philosophy of practice and patient care and reinforces my approach to care. My personal philosophy and the theory of human caring are integral to my individual and professional development and will continue to shape the course of my future practice.

References

Dockery, D. S. (2022). Shaping A Christian Worldview: An Introduction (Part I). Union University. https://www.uu.edu/centers/faculty/teaching/article.cfm?ID=364

Gunawan, J., Aungsuroch, Y., Watson, J., & Marzilli, C. (2022). Nursing Administration: Watson’s Theory of Human Caring. Nursing science quarterly, 35(2), 235–243. https://doi.org/10.1177/08943184211070582

Nikfarid, L., Hekmat, N., Vedad, A., & Rajabi, A. (2019). The main nursing metaparadigm concepts in human caring theory and Persian mysticism: a comparative study. Journal of medical ethics and history of medicine, 11, 6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6150916/

Rieg, L. S., Newbanks, R. S., & Sprunger, R. (2019). Caring from a Christian Worldview: Exploring Nurses’ Source of Caring, Faith Practices, and View of Nursing. Journal of Christian nursing : a quarterly publication of Nurses Christian Fellowship, 35(3), 168–173. https://doi.org/10.1097/CNJ.0000000000000474

Wisconsin technical College. (2023). 18.2 basic concepts – Nursing fundamentals. WI Technical Colleges Open Press – Publishing open resources for students. https://wtcs.pressbooks.pub/nursingfundamentals/chapter/18-2-basic-concepts/

Personal Worldview