Question

1.What is the relationship between your Personal Philosophy of Nursing and your professional practice?

2.What is the relationship between your Personal Philosophy of Nursing and your professional practice?

3.What theories of nursing have you studied?

Answer 1

I think as a nurse you are held to the highest of standards and patients look up to you. You have to be on your toes and bring your A game everyday you clock in. By the time I clock out I am emotionally and physically drained. I can’t tell you how relieved I am to just sit in my car on the way home, but I can tell you that I go home feeling good because my Philosophy is to treat my patients as if they are my own family.

Practice research, and theory are the cornerstones of the nursing profession. The relationship of these three cornerstones are reciprocal and cyclical. Clinical practice generates research questions and knowledge for theory. Research guides our practice and build knowledge through theory development. Theory guides research and improve practice. In this editorial,
I will describe the relationship among the three cornerstones of nursing—Practice, research, and theory—and discuss the theory-practice gap as an impediment to theory-based practice.

Effective nursing practice requires the application of knowledge, skills, caring, and art to care for patients in an effective, efficient, and considerate way. An important part of the knowledge used in making nursing clinical decisions is produced by research findings. Ideally, all patient care decisions should be based on research-evidence. Research findings are used to develop a protocol and the protocol is followed in daily nursing practice.

In any discipline, science is the result of the relationship between the process of inquiry (research) and the product of knowledge (theory). In addition to guiding nursing practice, the purpose of research is to build knowledge in a discipline through the generation of theory and or testing theory. The relationship between research and theory is reciprocal where research generate more knowledge and theory. Theory is integral to the research process where it is important to use theory as a framework to provide perspective and guidance to the research study. Theory can also be used to guide the research process by generating and testing phenomena of interest. The primary purpose of theory in the profession of nursing is to improve practice by positively influence the health and quality of life of patients.  The relationship between theory and practice is reciprocal. Practice is the basis for the development of nursing theory whereas nursing theory must be validated in practice.

There are four levels of theory: Grand Theory, Metatheory, Middle Range Theory, and Practice Theory. Many other theories fall into these categories.