What is the role of the Advanced Professional Nurse in creating an ethical practice environment? Respond to this question, based on your selected APN role.
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Nursing theories provide direction and guidance for structuring professional nursing practice, education, and research. It also differentiates the focus of nursing from other professions and serves to guide assessment, intervention, and evaluation of nursing care" (Colley, 2013, p. 34).
One of the most important roles of nursing theory is that it defines the profession and promotes its autonomy. The benefits of having a defined body of theory in nursing include better patient care, enhanced professional status for nurses, improved communication between nurses, and guidance for research and education (Nolan, 2015, p. 12). Nursing is a highly respected profession and one that needs to be validated and substantiated.
There are many different nursing theories that have been recognized. The theory that I would like to model and strive to educate future nurses to exemplify is Sister Simone Roach theory, which is based on caring as the central theme. She identified the 5 C's of caring which include: commitment, conscience, competence, compassion, and confidence (Miller, 2012). The difficulty comes in when measuring some of these components of her theory. How do we measure compassion and confidence?
Theories tend to be based on science foundation of actual experimentation and exploration. Nursing is based on evidence-based practice through research. Some would argue nursing is more than science and that it is more of an art. Nursing has been occurring for a long time and some argue nursing existed long before theories.
References
Colley, S. (2013).Nursing theory: its importance to practice.Nursing Standard. 17, 46, 33-37. Date of acceptance: May 9 2003.
Nolan, M. et al. (2015) Nursing's knowledge base: does it have to be unique? Journal of Nursing.7, 5, 270-276
Miller, A. (2012) The relationship between nursing theory and nursing practice. Journal of Advanced Nursing.10, 5, 417-424