Introduction
Theories in nursing are often used as a guide to help nurses provide excellent, patient-centered care. The basis of one’s nursing philosophy is the interpersonal link between patients and professionals. Mental health nursing can benefit from the theory’s cultivation of the relationship between the nurse and the patient. In the psychiatric field, there is the theory of interpersonal interactions, which provides principles concerning the internal coherence, clarity, characterization, and operability of nursing operations. This paper will address the four meta-paradigms in nursing and interpersonal relations theory, together with the theory’s components and applications to treatment.
The Four Meta-Paradigms
The four nursing meta-paradigm concepts are people, health, environment, and nursing. With these meta-paradigms, one can operationalize the theoretical concepts and improve patient treatment by drawing on conceptual theories, models, and academic research. The four fundamental principles are utilized as a theoretical framework to explain how the nursing practice relates to each other (George, 2017). Each idea should be utilized to ensure that the care provided is of high quality, precision and promotes ethics, and each concept is employed in quality improvement and appropriate care.
The Patient Meta-Paradigm
The person is at the core of the nursing paradigm. The person is referred to as the patient himself or herself when they are in the hospital or other health care facility. On the other hand, the care of an individual, family, and community is referred to as the metaparadigm aspect. When treating “patients,” the human idea isn’t necessary; instead, a person should be viewed as an independent entity (Deliktas et al., 2019). A nursing staff member must always be on hand to guarantee that patients are treated with dignity and respect when they arrive at the healthcare institution (George, 2017). In addition, good therapeutic interaction between patients, families, and nurses is crucial for nursing practice.
Environment-Based Meta-Paradigm
The environment is an external force exerted on an organism that is influenced by its cultural context. Both internal and external elements are considered in this meta-paradigm when assessing the patient’s recovery speed. As a meta-paradigm concept, the environment is remarkable because it influences and manipulates other ideas. Ward-Miller et al. (2021) claimed that the environmental meta-paradigm manipulates the surrounding environment to create comfort and calm for patients to get the greatest results.
The Nursing Meta-Paradigm
The therapeutic interpersonal interaction between nurses and patients is at the heart of the nursing philosophy. Nurses’ behaviors, general features, and characteristics in providing medical services to patients comprise the nursing meta-paradigm (George, 2017). Nursing ensures that patients and nurses develop relationships based on trust and cooperation to achieve the best possible outcomes in personal medical care.
The Health Meta-Paradigm
The health meta-paradigm refers to a healthy person’s personality and other human processes evolving toward constructive, creative, personal and community life. Healthcare providers use the health concept to protect themselves from damage or illness. Regardless of the circumstances, it cares about the overall health and well-being of the individual (George, 2017). The patient’s overall health should be considered while developing or managing a patient, including their emotional, physical and mental health and disease treatment.
Katharine Kolcaba Comfort Theory
Katherine Kolcaba was selected as the theorist for this particular term paper. Her nursing theory, established in the 1990s, is known as the comfort theory. She is a nursing theorist who used these three words to define comfort. These three concepts are referred to as a relief, ease, and transcendence. Physical, psychological and spiritual, environmental, and societal factors can all contribute to a patient’s sense of well-being (Kolcaba et al., 2018). When discussing a patient’s or a family member’s health, it is essential to understand their perspective on what constitutes optimal functioning. The provision of comfort in nursing is of critical significance since a patient who is in discomfort and experiencing pain is more likely to experience a variety of concerns and complications that may have been prevented, in addition to a reduction in their motivation to get better.
The theory emphasizes the patient’s level of comfort. It defines comfort as the fulfillment of needs in the contexts of the patient’s physical, social, environmental, and psychospiritual lives. The family-centered paradigm is the theoretical foundation for comfort theory, which views patients not only as people but also as families, communities, and institutions that need medical attention (Kolcaba et al., 2018). When applied to individual patient circumstances, the three categories of comfort and the four settings in which care is provided can be used to distinguish patients’ many different comfort requirements.
Two Practice-Specific Concepts
The building blocks of any theory are concepts. Researchers use practice-specific concepts when describing reality in terms of an image or idea or even a mental fabrication of that phenomenon. Throughout this section, there will be a focus on two practice-based concepts that are both unique and useful. Ease and relief are the two concepts to be discussed. These concepts affect nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals.
First Concept: Ease
A patient is said to be in a state of ease when completely satisfied. This may refer to the patient’s need for solace due to previous experiences and prognosis. For instance, patients unsure about their diagnosis can need passionate support to feel more at ease in this area (Kolcaba et al., 2018). The observation of ease for patients and how it relates to the recovery process of those patients led to the development of the comfort theory. A useful indicator of a person’s potential for operational success is their comfort level. When nurses recognize the unmet requirements of patients and their families, they can also adjust these demands by taking precedence over aspects that cannot be modified by nurses, such as the patient’s diagnosis or their financial situation. With the help of these concepts, nurses can develop a comfort care plan to improve the patient’s level of comfort beyond the measurement of where they started.
The Second Concept: Relief
A state in which a specific experience, such as pain, cold, sickness, or worry, has been alleviated is referred to as relief. When patients are given medication to alleviate their pain, relief refers to their comfort level. According to Kolcaba, these euphoric states can be induced in four therapeutic contexts: psychospiritual, physical, environmental, or societal (Kolcaba et al., 2018). Nurses have used the Comfort Theory in a variety of ways. In my experience, a surge in health-seeking behavior and excellent institutional outcomes strongly correlate to patient satisfaction, which I believe is a desirable and encouraging conclusion. To determine the patient’s physical requirements, I look for impairments in the body’s physiological mechanisms caused by a condition such as a disease, surgery, or infection. Comfort therapy can relieve itching, shivering, vomiting, nausea, and pain without the need for drugs. In my practice, I employ various strategies to reduce patients’ discomfort and increase their sense of well-being.
Conclusion
Patient’s well-being is of utmost importance to the nursing profession, which provides them with the resources they need to achieve their goals. Nursing practitioners use four meta-paradigms, each of which includes notions that link to one another. Collaboration amongst healthcare professionals is essential if we are to advance the use of evidence-based medicine. Nurses should conduct seminars to learn about other cultures and religious groups, and what kind of health care services they want, because of the wide range of ethnic and religious views.
References
Butts, J. B., & Rich, K. L. (2017). Philosophies and theories for advanced nursing practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Choi, E., & Moore, G. (2020). A case for cultural awareness. The journal for Nurse Practitioners, 1692). 163-164. Web.
Deliktas, A., Korukcu, O., Aydin, R., & Kabukcuoglu, K. (2019). Nursing students’ perceptions of nursing metaparadigms: A phenomenological study. The Journal of Nursing Research, 27(5), e45.
George, J. B. (2017). Nursing theories: The base for professional nursing practice (6 Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education
Kolcaba, K., Morris, D. L., Estridge, K. M., & Winkelman, C. (2018). Comfort and fluid retention in adult patients receiving hemodialysis. Nephrology Nursing Journal, 45(1).
Mackey, A., & Bassendowski, S. (2017). The history of evidence-based practice in nursing education and practice. Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(1), 51-55.
Ward-Miller, S., Farley, E. M., Espinosa, L., Brous, M. E., Giorgi-Cipriano, J., & Ferguson, J. (2021). Psychiatric mental health nursing in the international year of the nurse and COVID-19: One hospital’s perspective on resilience and innovation-Past, present and future. Archives of psychiatric nursing, 35(3), 303-310.
