Leadership & Provision of Care (ANSWERED)

QUESTION

Purpose:

The purpose of this reflection is for learners to reflect on current practice and the impact that nursing history has on their leadership and/or provision of care.

Course Outcomes:

This reflection enables the student to meet the following course outcome:

CO1: Describe persons and events in nursing history from the early years through the 19^th century related to leadership and provision of care. (PO2)

Due Date

During the assigned week (Sunday the start of the assigned week through Sunday the end of the assigned week):
- Posts in the discussion at least two times, and
- Posts in the discussion on two different days

Points Possible

50 points

Directions

Reflection is an activity that involves your deep thought into your own experiences related to the concepts of the week. Answers should be detailed. In reflections students:
- Demonstrate understanding of concepts for the week
- Engage in meaningful dialogue with classmates and/or instructor
- Express opinions clearly and logically, in a professional manner
Use the rubric on this page as you compose your answers.
Scholarly sources are NOT required for this reflection
Best Practices include:
- Participation early in the week is encouraged to stimulate meaningful discussion among classmates and instructor.
- Enter the reflection often during the week to read and learn from posts.
- Select different classmates for your reply each week.

Reflection Question

Reflect on your current practice. How does nursing history impact your leadership and/or care provision? Please include specific nursing history persons or events in your reflection.

ANSWER

Reflection on Leadership and Provision of Care

**How does nursing history impact your leadership and/or care provision?**

Florence Nightingale published various works about nursing, collated data about nurse performance, and recorded nursing activities that improved patient outcomes. Nightingale’s revolutionary way of working established evidence-based practice (EBP). Today, EBP has become standard practice, and we are required to integrate evidence into practice.

Nightingale also helped shape the competencies and skills required of nurse leaders. She endlessly strived to improve nursing care and advocated for improving hospital conditions. Nurse leaders today are also expected to use their attributes, communication skills, expertise, and coalition building to bring change to their organizations and the healthcare system, just like Nightingale did. Her leadership shaped the competencies and skills required of nurse leaders.

Another way nursing history has influenced my practice is by dictating how nursing services should be delivered. Nightingale emphasized that nurses should care for the patient and not the disease (Stolley et al., 2000). She advocated for compassionate care of patients, and her views on sanitation, cleanliness, and nutrition remain practice principles in contemporary nursing. She insisted that patients are not just physical entities but also spiritual. According to Nightingale, nurses needed to also attend to these spiritual needs, making her the first nursing theorist to conceptualize holistic care (McEwin & Willis, 2019). Martha Rogers, the author of the science of unitary and irreducible human beings theory, echoed Nightingale’s worldview by positing that humans are a unitary whole and interconnected with the environment. According to Rogers, all human needs (physical, social, emotional, and spiritual) and the environment are indivisible and irreducible. To achieve optimal health, one must focus on all the above components (McEwin & Willis, 2019). Rogers’ theory created the groundwork for holistic care and biopsychosocial care models, which now underlie the current nursing practice. These nursing theorists helped shift nursing practice from a biomedical model to the current biopsychosocial models that most nurses now adhere to during practice.

References

McEwen, M., & Willis, E. M. (2019). Theoretical basis for nursing. Philadephia, Baltimore New York: Wolters-Kluwer.

Stolley, J. M., Buckwalter, K. C., & Garand, L. (2000). The Evolution of Nursing Research. Journal of the Neuromusculoskeletal System, 8(1), 10–15. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6739074/