My personal philosophy is formulated based on the theories of Dorothea Orem (See: Orem & Taylor, 2001) which revolve around a general and specific concept of care. Specifically, Orem offers a conceptual framework, which I accept at a personal level, of the major concepts central to all nursing philosophy, these being the concepts of person, environment, health, nursing and nursing education. Based on my readings of Orem and my personal experience in caring for others, I feel that with respect to the profession of nursing, a person is best defined as a human being who has the actual ability to care for self or the potential ability to care for self.
My philosophy is based on the notion that, to varying extents, people can be helped to care for themselves when their self-care ability has been reduced or even eliminated. I see self-care as a learned behavior. However, and in some situations such as illness or injury, the provider of care must be a trained nurse who also has an obligation to help this person learn to regain as much of his or her self-care abilities as possible.
Based on Orem's theories, my philosophy of nursing is that it is an evidence-based practice with the goal of therapeutic response to self-care deficits of individuals, families, and communities. In this regard, the nurse must take a series of sequential and deliberate steps to compensate for and help people to overcome the health-associated limitations placed on them as self-care agencies.
The foregoing perspective has implications for the concept of health which I characterize as structural and functional wholeness or soundness and which includes the physical, psychological, interpersonal and social aspects of all individuals. The healthy person is able to maintain self-care and it is incumbent upon all health professionals, including nurses, to study, understand, develop and implement changes in both the individual and the environment that move pat...