Knowing In Nursing

Unpredictable situations arise on a day-to-day basis for nurses. Whether it be in a hospital, clinic, or office setting, nurses have to have the knowledge and understanding critically think. Barbara Carper states (Carper, 1978, p. 23) “Such an understanding does not extend the range of knowledge, but rather involves critical attention to the question of what it means to know and what kinds of knowledge are held to be of most value in the discipline of nursing”. There are four ways of knowing concepts Carper describes, empirical, personal, ethical, and aesthetic. These four concepts are utilized daily, sometimes by instinct, or intuition. I can relate these four concepts with situations I have encountered working in the ICU or during my clinical

ANA describes the science of nursing as (Cipriano, 2007, para. 4) “factual and aligned with explanation”. Empirical nursing is used daily in the hospital setting. I use facts, and knowledge learned in nursing school, and from working in the hospital, to care for patients regularly. When I first got off of orientation I took care of a post op heart patient who still had a Swan Ganz catheter in, and still had to have daily cardiac outputs measured. During my orientation, I have taken care of a hand full of post op heart patients, but I was still nervous about doing the cardiac outputs. I remembered the basics of how to compute them along with notes I had taken when I was still on orientation. After reviewing my notes and remembering what I had learning I successfully obtained the cardiac outputs for the surgeon. Knowledge and facts on care for patients in the foundation of

According to ANA personal is defined as (Cipriano, 2007, para. 6) “the relationship between nurse and patient”. It is very important to develop a mutual trust and interpersonal relationship with the patient you are caring for. Last while doing my capstone in nursing school I did my cliniclas on a telemetry unit. I was caring for an older man who was had hypertension and diabetes. When I first introduced myself, I could tell automatically he did not trust me because I was nursing student. When I was doing my morning assessment he made comments like “are you sure you know what you are doing” and “You should check with the real nurse”. I didn’t let his comments bother me because I knew by the end of the day I would gain his trust. As the day went on I thoroughly explained everything I was doing, any produces he had done, and all of the medications I gave him. When the cardiologist came in to see him he briefly explained to him that he was scheduled to have a medicine induced stress test. The doctor quickly rushed out of the room and I could tell my patient didn’t fully understand what the doctor said. I sat down next to him and started to explain the process and what would happen during the procedure. At the end of the day when we had our end of the day meeting with our professor she told me the man said that I would make a great nurse one day, and he was thankful for my care. It is important to build a nurse-patient relationship. The patient has