NURS 715 Week 4 Personal Philosophy of Nursing Paper Example

Image-Bearers in Need of Care: A Personal Philosophy of Nursing Within the Metaparadigm and a Biblical Worldview

Introduction

For eighteen years I have cared for people whose hearts have failed them, literally and sometimes in every other sense: the man whose heart attack came three weeks after he lost his job, the young mother with a cardiomyopathy no one can explain, the elderly widower who cannot remember his medications and has no one to remind him. Over those years, and through my faith in Christ, I have come to a philosophy of nursing that I can state in one sentence: nursing is the skilled, compassionate care of persons who bear God's image, who are finite and relational, and who live in environments that can heal or harm them, with the aim of restoring as much wholeness as this life allows. This paper defines and defends each part of that sentence through the metaparadigm concepts of person, environment, health and nursing, adds caring as a fifth concept, and explains what the philosophy asks of me as a DNP-prepared nurse.

How the Philosophy Developed

My philosophy did not arrive fully formed. As a new graduate, I thought of nursing mostly as tasks done safely and on time, and my patients as diagnoses with room numbers. Three experiences changed that view. The first was caring for a man in his forties who died of a massive heart attack while his teenage son sat in the waiting room; I realized that I had been caring for a heart and not for a father. The second was a season of burnout in my tenth year, when I worked extra shifts until I could no longer feel compassion, and learned that a nurse who ignores her own limits eventually has little left to give. The third was returning to Scripture during that season and reading the Gospels with a nurse's eyes, noticing how often Jesus touched, fed, rested and noticed people. Each concept below carries the mark of one of those experiences.

Person

I believe God made every human being in His image, male and female (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Genesis 1:27), and so carries a worth that no diagnosis, disability, age or bad choice can reduce. Shelly and Miller (2006) argue that a Christian view of the person rests on this creation and that persons are whole beings, body and spirit together, rather than bodies that happen to have feelings. This belief governs how I respond to the patient who has not taken his medications for a month. He is not a noncompliant case; he is a person whose reasons I need to understand.

I also believe persons are finite and relational. Finitude is not a defect. In an essay for Christian nurses, Templeton and Kapic (2026) treat human limitation as belonging to God's good design, not as a flaw to overcome, and they argue that failure to honor limits contributes to burnout among new nurses. I apply this to my patients as much as to myself: a heart that can no longer do what it once did is a limit to be honored and worked with, not a failure to be blamed on the patient. Persons are also constituted by their relationships. Bayuo (2026) proposed a nursing theory grounded in African relational philosophies that treats personhood as something achieved and sustained through communal belonging rather than an individual possession. Although I come to the idea through Scripture, which describes people made for relationship with God and one another, Bayuo's theory confirms what I see on the unit: the widower without family is not only lonely, he is less safe, because personhood and health are lived among others.

Environment

I believe the environment includes everything outside the person that shapes health: the physical surroundings, the family, the community and the systems of care. Some environments heal and some harm. A hospital room with constant alarms and no window harms sleep and orientation, and a neighborhood without safe places to walk harms recovery from heart disease. Christian teaching describes creation as good but broken, and I see that brokenness in environments that make health harder for the poor than for the wealthy. Clark et al. (2026) describe a whole-person framework, CREATION Life, that includes environment alongside rest, activity, trust in God, relationships, outlook, nutrition and choice. The framework reminds me that a nurse's attention to environment is not peripheral: arranging a quiet room, helping a family understand a medication schedule or connecting a patient to cardiac rehabilitation near home are acts of care for the person's environment. The environment also includes the nurse's own working conditions, since a unit that is chronically understaffed shapes the care every patient receives.

Health

I believe health is not merely the absence of disease but a state of wholeness in body, mind, relationships and spirit, which can be present in part even when disease is present. Most of the people on my unit will carry their cardiac diagnosis for the rest of their lives, yet some live with remarkable wholeness, at peace with God, reconciled with family and active within their limits. Scripture holds out a final restoration in which God will wipe away every tear and death will be no more (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Revelation 21:4). That hope shapes my view of health in this life: full wholeness belongs to the new creation, and the nurse's work is to restore as much of it as this life allows. Research supports a broad view of health that includes the spiritual. In a survey of nursing students, clinicians and educators, Wilson-Anderson et al. (2026) linked daily spiritual experience with less burnout, more resilience and greater compassion satisfaction, which suggests that spiritual wholeness contributes to health even among those who care for others.

Nursing

I believe nursing is a calling, a profession and a practice. It is a calling because God equips people to serve others, and Shelly and Miller (2006) describe nursing as a vocation in which care for the sick participates in God's care for the world. It is a profession because it rests on a body of knowledge, ethical commitments and accountability to the public. And it is a practice because it is learned and exercised in particular acts: assessing, teaching, comforting, advocating, coordinating. Jesus' description of the good Samaritan, who saw, had compassion, went to the injured man, bound up his wounds and arranged for his continued care (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Luke 10:33-35), is the best summary of nursing I know. It includes noticing, feeling, acting skillfully and making provision for what comes next. The Samaritan also crossed a social boundary to help a stranger his community would have avoided, which reminds me that nursing's care is owed to every patient, including those who are difficult, unfamiliar or unlike me.

Caring

I add caring as a fifth concept because without it the other four describe medicine, social work or public health as well as nursing. A 2026 comparison of nine caring theories concluded that caring operates as a generative principle that rearranges the other metaparadigm concepts into distinct models of practice, ranging from transpersonal caring to ethical and relational caring (Muñoz Devesa & Rico Becerra, 2026). I find that conclusion persuasive. In my practice, caring is what turns a set of tasks into nursing: the same blood pressure check can be a data point or an encounter with a frightened person. Caring is not a feeling added to competent nursing; it is the form competent nursing takes when it treats the patient as a person. For a Christian, caring is also an imitation of Christ, who had compassion on the crowds because they were harassed and helpless.

The Philosophy in DNP Practice

A philosophy that stops at the bedside is not enough for a DNP-prepared nurse. If persons bear God's image, then systems that consistently fail certain groups violate that dignity, and the DNP's role in quality improvement and policy becomes a way of honoring it. If environments heal or harm, then redesigning a discharge process or a rehabilitation referral is a form of caring for environment. If finitude is part of God's design, then staffing and scheduling that ignore nurses' limits are not merely inefficient but unjust. My philosophy therefore commits me to work on the systems in which nurses and patients meet, not only on the encounters themselves.

Tensions I Still Hold

Two tensions remain. The first is between honoring patients' autonomy and caring for their whole person when their choices harm them. The second is between my Christian convictions and my responsibility to care equally for patients and colleagues who do not share them. I resolve both, imperfectly, by remembering that the image of God is in every person and that care is offered, not imposed.

Conclusion

My philosophy of nursing holds that persons are image-bearers who are finite and relational, that environments shape health for good or ill, that health is wholeness that can be partly present even in disease, that nursing is a calling, profession and practice, and that caring gives nursing its distinctive form. Scripture, scholarship and eighteen years of practice support these beliefs, and as a DNP, they commit me to care for persons and for the systems that serve them.

References

Bayuo, J. (2026). The theory of communal-relational person-becoming: A nursing theory from the African philosophical perspective. Nursing Inquiry, 33(4), Article e70157. https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.70157

Clark, J., Osa, A., Catala-Beauchamp, A., Rollins, E., Gold, J., Torres-Logan, D., Sebastian, N., Luther, N., Kyle, T., & Callender, L. (2026). Rooting nursing education in Creation Life: A whole-person framework. Journal of Christian Nursing, 43(3), 182-185. https://doi.org/10.1097/CNJ.0000000000001382

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Muñoz Devesa, A., & Rico Becerra, J. I. (2026). Caring as a generative principle: Reconfiguring the metaparadigm and operative mechanisms in nursing theory. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 82(10), 9433-9447. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.70544

Shelly, J. A., & Miller, A. B. (2006). Called to care: A Christian worldview for nursing (2nd ed.). IVP Academic.

Templeton, S. J., & Kapic, K. M. (2026). The importance of understanding limitations in nursing. Journal of Christian Nursing, 43(4), 224-229. https://doi.org/10.1097/CNJ.0000000000001411

Wilson-Anderson, K., Rothacker-Peyton, S., Fifer, P., Waldo, M., & Charbonnier, K. (2026). The impact of spirituality on the professional well-being of nurses. Journal of Christian Nursing, 43(4), 210-217. https://doi.org/10.1097/CNJ.0000000000001409