Nursing Science the Nursing Profession Essay

As such, a nurse is primarily to recognize herself as an individual in the world, with certain responses to this world. When a patient enters the hospital, such a patient is also to be seen as a unique individual who responds to the world and his or her environment in a certain way.Nursing Science the Nursing Profession Essay

Humanistic nursing is then primarily experiential rather than experimental. This means that new knowledge is gained with every new patient that arrives for treatment. In giving treatment, responses are observed and noted for future reference in similar situations. It is not however assumed that a treatment will work because it did in the past and in similar conditions. Instead, hypotheses are based upon experiences of the past. The recognition that hypotheses may prove incorrect helps the nurse to be open to new experiences. Each human being is then seen as a “world,” as it were, with the opportunity to investigate this world and use it for the future improvement of nursing.

In this context, the authors (2008, p. 3) propose what they refer to as dialogical nursing. This means that the world of nursing is lived by means of interaction. The “dialogue” involves not only the nurse and her interactions with other nurses and patients, but also the influences of other factors such as the environment and the requirements of the nursing profession itself. Everything is seen as interacting with everything else. In the world, nursing is then seen as a world itself, which functions within a wider reality. In this way, it is fully contextualized, with a recognition of influences from the environment beyond the immediate setting of the care giving facility.