Nursing Program Philosophy...
The nursing program philosophy contains the Faculty’s beliefs about nursing and nursing education.
The Faculty believe that caring is the essence of nursing. Caring in the human health experience is the focus of the discipline of nursing. Caring is a relational process in which the aim is to nurture the wholeness of persons, including faculty, students, colleagues, and patients. Caring has both spiritual and ethical dimensions. Spirituality involves creativity and choice and is revealed in support, empowerment, growth, and hope in caring practice. The crucial part of ethical caring focuses on promoting the good, and functions as the compass in the nurses’ choice making.
In transpersonal caring the nurse seeks to connect with the spirit of another in a mutual search for meaning and wholeness. Through transpersonal caring, the nurse develops a helping-trusting, authentic caring relationship with a client or patient to facilitate healing. The transpersonal nurse centers consciousness and intentionality on caring, healing, and wholeness, rather than on disease, illness, and pathology. Transpersonal caring calls for an authenticity of self, an ability to be present to self and others in a reflective frame. Caring in practice is developed and known through reflection-on-experience.
The holographic paradigm in nursing recognizes the interconnectedness of all things, and that everything is a whole in one context and a part of the whole in another context. Spiritual/ethical caring infuses all nursing phenomena, including physical, social-cultural, legal, technological, economic, political, and educational structures. The holographic paradigm, based on the reality of practice, introduces the spiritual and ethical dimensions of caring to the whole of nursing.
Person
A person is a unique functionally integrated individual connected with
others and with the environment. To be human means to be free to
choose, which gives
meaning to life and affects a person’s well-being.
Well-being (Health)
Well-being is considered to be a dynamic process involving unity
and harmony within the individual person as a whole (mind, body,
soul).
Health encompasses
the entire nature of the individual: the physical, social, esthetic
and moral realms. When the individual experiences his/her real
self, harmony
is the
result. Harmony is associated with well-being.
Nursing
Nursing is both an art and a practice science. The goal of nursing
is to promote well-being through caring.
Through transpersonal caring, the nurse is able to help the client
recognize both harmony and disharmony within the individual.
The nurse supports
the well-being of persons, families, groups, communities and
societies via
a caring relationship.
Education and Knowledge
The Faculty believe that knowledge exists in the relationship,
rather than the objective world or the subjective experience.
Nursing requires
integration
of multiple types of knowledge. These include empirics (the
science of nursing), aesthetics (the art of nursing), ethics (moral knowledge),
and personal knowledge
(knowledge gained by life experience). The creation of nursing
knowledge requires complex decision-making involving consciousness,
caring,
and choice. Learning involves the creation of understanding
and
appreciation of knowing
within a context of value and meaning.
Education involves all aspects of caring for the person (student, faculty, patient, or community member). Undergraduate education in nursing builds on previously learned information and prepares the student as a beginning professional practitioner. Within nursing, learning and growth are lifetime endeavors.
Approved by Faculty 7/3/03
Reviewed by Faculty 5/14/04