Florence Nightingale's Nursing Theory Essay

Nursing is a profession that must be chosen to fulfill a desire to help others. It is a truly rewarding career choice but it is not for everyone. Being a nurse is unpredictable; it’s fun, it’s sad, it’s encouraging and discouraging, it’s different every single day. Nursing is a challenging job because every single patient is different and as a nurse, we must individualize our care and use our critical thinking skills to offer the best outcomes. In Ferreira’s philosophy the nurse is the care giver but ultimately the patient’s advocate. It is vital that the nurse speaks for the patient when they are restrained from doing so themselves. The nurse is also an educator, he or she must understand that education levels vary among patients and that education must also be individualized and put into lament terms by which the patient will understand and comply. The nurse must know when, how and who to teach the information to because there are many factors that can diminish the effectiveness of educating someone about their healthcare. The nurse must be culturally educated and respect different beliefs. He or she should make no judgements nor base the care upon biased opinions of one’s culture. Every patient must be cared for with the same amount …show more content…
Florence Nightingale’s theory focused on maintaining a clean environment by disinfecting, cleaning and doing simple things such as opening the windows to allow fresh air to enter to maintain clean ventilation and access to sunlight (Black, 2014, p. 268). She also recognized the importance of the nurse in maintaing a healthy environment which is very similar to Ferreira’s theory. They are different in the sense that Ferreira’s theory states that the environment has to be more than clean, it has to be individualized, where Nightingale’s theory only focuses on maintaining a clean