The Kelly-Mancuso philosophy of nursing

In the 1990's, I made my first unsuccessful attempt at Graduate School by enrolling in Hunter College. I wrote the following as part of one of the projects for my course Theoretical Foundations of Nursing Science in the Spring of 1996:

In conceptualizing my personal philosophy of nursing, I determined that person and health are the focal concepts of my nursing practice. The person is defined as a psycho-socio-cultural soul with a physical manifestation of body. Each of these elements of person is separate, but each is intertwined with the others, with the person being more than the sum of the elements involved.

The primary component of person is soul in that the soul of the person lives beyond the physical manifestation of body. An example of the overlap of the person elements is that the social and the cultural each include integrated ideals of religious and familial networks and support systems. Here I need to clarify the definition of family. It is not singular in meaning within the context of my nursing philosophy. In some situations the friendship network of the person can form an extended family, which can replace immediate family during crisis or due to dysfunction. In this event, the friend is as significant as a blood relative, if not more so.

The second of my focal concepts, health, is a relative term, differing from person to person. Health is defined by the person or between persons. It differs from physical body wellness. Health can exist without physical body wellness, as in the case of a controlled chronic illness. Physical body wellness can exist in the absence of health, as in clinical depression.

The nurse, who along with the client is person, has several roles. There is the role of facilitator between client and family and client and the health care team.

Client advocate is also an important role, in which the nurse supports the choices of the client. Elemental to a successful nurse's perspective is an openness to the differences that exist between societies, cultures, and religions. It is reasonable to disagree if there is respect for differences. In cases where a nurse is unable to put aside bias, there should be an active effort to work in an area that limits exposure to these clients, as an inability to identify with a client leaves the nurse ill-equipped to meet the client 's needs.

Within my philosophy, the difference between a person's physical body and a person's soul sets forth the idea that life continues beyond the physical body. Accordingly, death becomes not a termination of life, but a transitory point to another plane of existence, which cannot be explained. As Ross has stated, it can be compared to a caterpillar making the transition to butterfly. The world of a butterfly is beyond the comprehension of the caterpillar, yet, at the same time, is a world of new and different wonders. It is not possible to understand or imagine what is beyond the transition of death, which is frightening, but I believe there is a new place of wonder and new experiences awaiting the souls of this world.

It has been 23 years since I wrote this down, and it has guided me over the course of my Nursing life. As much as things have changed, I feel it still applies. Nursing is a part of me always. 

Happy Nurse's Week!