Within nursing, there are certain ideals that need to be met in order to achieve successful nursing practice. These perspectives can be encapsulated in four primary groups, or metaparadigms as follows: person/patient, environment, health, nursing practice (King, I. M., 2015). By combining these paradigms into a comprehensive action plan, nurses and other professionals in the healthcare field are able to provide comprehensive care to patients, or the first metaparadigm.

As previously stated, the first metaparadigm is person, or patient; in more detail, it relates to the individual undergoing treatment or that will undergo treatment, and their innate qualities, both physical and non-physical; for example, the metaparadigm can both encapsulate themselves, such as their age, weight, health conditions, and general biology, or their surroundings, such as their viewpoints, culture, family, and religion. Understanding what makes individuals is what also allows a nurse to be a healthcare advocate for the patients and provide standards of excellence. The second metaparadigm instead of inherently focusing on the patient and their personal conditions instead focuses on their outward conditions that might relate to their health. In this case, conditions like their physical environment can lead to a reduction in care quality, such as poor lighting or dank conditions. Their non-physical environment, such as professional communication, can also cause certain health changes, as stress, among other things, can negatively affect health. This, however, provides caretakers like myself with an opportunity to improve the conditions in the patient’s environment, directly affecting their quality of care as well. This metaparadigm also involves the prior metaparadigm, as patient’s each have a culture, or religion (or lack thereof), or family members that may affect the patient’s healing environment.

The third metaparadigm is health, or more succinctly, the human condition of whether a person (patient) has homeostatic imbalances or not, where a lock thereof constitutes “healthy.” Understanding what makes a healthy person healthy, or an unhealthy one unhealthy, can assist a nurse in treatment. For example, being able to realize states and conditions in which an individual patient can experience a homeostatic imbalance allows for nurse professionals to communicate and act certain treatment plans which will then grant higher quality care for the patient. Being able to ensure that the patients are able to experience this type of care is imperative for all nurses, including me, since it fulfils the role of the primary health advocate. Realizing any deficiencies in care also aids nurses in changing healthcare guidelines in policies to grant higher care quality in the long-term, regardless of disease or even facility. In doing so, I am capable of truly changing patient healthcare outcomes on both a personal and large scale, which goes hand-in-hand with and complements the other metaparadigms. This includes the final metaparadigm: nursing and nursing practice.

The fourth and final metaparadigm, nursing, is the culmination of all prior metaparadigms in order to completely grasp and provide essential nursing treatment to any patient, regardless of individual patient needs, their environment, or their health. I, along with other nurse professionals, are able to apply our nursing philosophies in a way that maximizes both time and resource efficiency while simultaneously ensuring that proper healthcare quality is delivered. The ability to take into consideration the patient’s innate qualities, along with their environment’s qualities, their health necessities, and your own strengths as a nurse, we are able to apply our own nursing philosophies in a way that directly positively affects the quality of their health. Beyond this, these metaparadigms serve as a “checklist” of priorities to mentally sort through when providing care; what are the patient’s qualities, such as age, weight, sex? What is the patient’s general environment like, such as their culture, familial relationships, and belief system? Do they have any prior health risks, or possible future health risks? Analysis and the ability to utilize these questions are fantastic for applying your own nursing philosophy, as I attempt to.

References

King, I. M. (2015). King’s general systems framework and theory. In J.P. Riehl-SIsca (Ed.), Conceptual models for nursing practice (3^rd ed., pp. 149-158). Norwalk, CTL Appleton and Lange.

March, A., & McCormack, D. (2009). Nursing theory- Directed healthcare: Modifying Kolcaba’s comfort theory as an institution-wide approach. Holistic Nursing Practice, 23(2), 75-80.

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