VALUES OF PROFESSIONAL NURSING

Personal and Professional Values of Nursing Practices



Personal and Professional Values of Nursing Practices

Introduction

In this essay work where we are required to identify the personal and professional values that underpin the practices of nursing and some appropriate behaviour for this profession, I intend to describe how I promoted one of the key values underpinning nursing practice. For this purpose, I have chosen the one from the NHS values i.e. Respect and Dignity for patients. The reason for choosing this core value amongst many values of this profession is a story which I have been experienced personally on my job. When I was on placement I helped an elderly woman to walk to the bathroom and have a wash. She was worried about having to use a “public” place to perform this private task and I reassured her that I would make every effort to protect her privacy and maintain her dignity. I made sure that we had everything we would need for her wash and escorted her to the bathroom. I helped her put the privacy sign on the door and showed her that we could lock the door to prevent people coming in.

Discussion

The value I have chosen is the dignity and respect and the significance of maintaining dignity for all the patients in a health care sector. Dignity is a terminology that is used for describing the significance and need of ethics, and moral values by considering it as an instinctive right of an individual to receive ethical treatment and respect. It is an expansion of the conception of Enlightenment era regarding inalienable and inherent rights. The word 'dignity' derives from the Latin word (dignitas). Generally, it denotes the status and respect, and it is used in many ways for suggesting that someone is deprived of attaining an appropriate and needed extent of respect, or even someone is weaken for treating themselves with appropriate and needed self-esteem. There is also an elongated history of the usage of this terminology regarding some special philosophies (Nursing & Midwifery Council, 2002).

In a health care sector, patients are required to receive basic human rights along with several other individual and exceptional rights especially those who are living any hospital, nursing or assisted living homes. Patients and the sufferers of assisted living homes must be provided with the provision of such special rights and benefits. Every one of us must have proper know how regarding such rights as we are required to work in health care sector, so along with the familiarity with this profession, we must carefully examine and take care of such specific rights of patients or sufferers in order to ensure effective and quality care to them (Applebaum, 2002, p. 1810).

Respect and dignity is an aspect that is very vital in and essentially required by all human beings, and same goes with the patients and the sufferers either they are in hospitals, at their own homes, or at any assisted living ...