Of the many ways a nurse can be defined, I find it difficult to narrow it down to just a few definitions. Nurses are loving, caring, hardworking, intelligent, fast, and the list goes on and on. The nursing profession is very demanding emotionally, physically and mentally. The two theories I focused on for my nursing essay are Orem's Self-Care Theory and Watson's Human Care Theory. I believe these two theorists encapsulate what I have experienced about being a nurse, working in the Rehabilitation Unit at St. Vincent. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Being in the Rehabilitation Unit, I learned a lot about what it means to be a nurse from the staff of nurses who work with me. Specifically, I believe Orem's Theory of Self-Care has an impact on what it means to be a nurse. In my experience, it always seems easier to complete a task for someone else who has difficulty doing it. For me it was a gesture resulting from my availability and desire to help. However, since I have been working in the Rehabilitation Unit, the nurses have taught me the importance of not always intervening in the patient's daily activities. At first they told me it was about building muscles so they could get stronger, but I believe it's much more than that. In Contemporary Nursing: Issues, Trends, & Management it is stated that Orem's theory was that it is a nurse's duty to restore a patient's self-care capacity through interventions with the ultimate goal of restoring the patient's overall well-being. Being in the rehabilitation unit, I learned that the patient's ability to take care of himself is at the heart of our theme. The care in our unit specializes in giving patients the ability to care for themselves, so when the time comes to leave the hospital they regain some of the independence they had before coming to the hospital. To expand on the philosophy of Orem's Self-Attention Theory, I think it is important to refer to Pascal's Pensées. In his Thoughts he wrote about the idea of a king's life and I believe it is complementary to Orem's Theory of Self-Care. This idea of being king is that we, as humans, desire to rule like royalty. We prefer to spend our days in free time rather than going to work. However, Pascal notices that the king who has no work or quarries to worry about, feels lonely and unhappy. Without diversion, the king has an eternity of inevitable death and disease awaiting him. He repeats it every day in solidarity with his thoughts focused on the inevitable. As humans we are constantly distracted by work, school, church, family, relationships, etc. So when we have time to play, it's very rewarding. Likewise, without nursing intervention, the patient sits feeling hopeless and focuses on the illness that has debilitated him. However, with nursing intervention, we are giving the patient the ability to provide for themselves again. We're giving them that diversion from illness or death, allowing them to focus on getting better. In past experiences I have been challenged by Orem's theory of self-care. For example, we once had a patient in the rehabilitation unit who no longer knew how to receive treatment. In the first hours of hospitalization, he refused almost all treatment and would have preferred to stay in bed all day and face the inevitable. In the following days, both physiotherapists, occupational therapists and nurses.
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