The four central concepts of nursing metaparadigm: person, health, environment, and nursing

Nursing metaparadigm is a declaration or series of declarations that identifies occurrences that include a range of philosophical beliefs and directs the approach to the identified assumptions. A metaparadigm is defined as the most comprehensive perspective of a field that serves as a summarizing unit or outline with which more limited structures or concepts develop. In this case, each field or discipline identifies an interesting or relevant phenomenon that it addresses in a unique way (Masters, n.d.). Unlike the concepts and propositions in the conceptual models, those that indentify and connect these phenomena are more intangible. The nursing profession is based on conceptual theories and models that reflect several paradigms originating from metaparadigm in the nursing field. The conceptual models in this profession are based on four central concepts i.e. person, health, environment, and nursing. This implies that nursing practice is based on the person receiving care, environment within which the patient exists, the health-illness continuum, and the nursing action themselves.

Person:

The first concept under nursing metaparadigm is the person receiving the care services from the health care system. This concept also represents the physical, psychological, spiritual, and socio-cultural components of the individual. The consideration of these components of the individual is based on the fact that humans are holistic beings with unique, self-responsibility, dynamic, creativity, sentient, and multidimensional capabilities. The nursing field considers human beings as open energy fields with distinctive experiences in life. As energy fields, humans beings are not only different from but also greater than a combination of their parts and cannot be expected from knowledge of their unique parts. A person increase his/her knowledge of self and the environment he/she lives in through learning, caring, empathy, and other models of communication, which are components of high complexity and diversity levels.

In the nursing environment and practice, the person receiving care is considered as a valued individual that needs to be understood, respected and nurtured. As a result, the individual has the right to make informed choices and decisions regarding his/her health and well-being. Moreover, the physical, spiritual, socio-cultural, psychological, intellectual, and biological aspects of the person and human development stages are described precisely because of their impact on behavior and health. Notably, these aspects or dimensions function upon and within the individual in an open, interactive, interdependent, and interrelated manner. Generally, the person receiving care is viewed as an open system that is constantly changing in joint process with the constantly-changing environment. As previously mentioned, those receiving care and clients of nursing actions may be suffering from an illness or injury or may be well and they also include families and communities ("Metaparadigm Concepts," 2000).

Environment:

The second concept in the nursing metaparadigm is environment, which is described as the geographical landscape of the social experience of human beings. This nursing metaparadigm can also be defined as a person's context or setting of experience of daily life and includes differences in time, space, and quality. The geographical landscape is characterized with individual, social, national, and international aspects. In addition, the nursing field considers a person's environment as his/her beliefs, traditions, values, mores, and expectations.

The environment that affects an individual's health and well-being is an energy field that is based on common process with the human energy field. As a result, it's conceptualized as the avenue where the nursing client or recipient of care experiences visible caring relationships, beauty, threats to his/her well-being and the lived health experiences. The nursing client's health is not only affected by his/her geographical landscape but it's influenced by other dimensions like developmental processes, political factors, and economic aspects of the social world. The environment in the nursing field can also be defined as all the significant people who have bonds with one another, a person's objective experiences in his/her lifetime, and the actual setting where the nursing care takes place ("The Meta-paradigm of Nursing," n.d.). As receivers of nursing care, nursing clients have an agreement with the harmonic environment.

Health:

The third concept of the nursing metaparadigm is health, which is a dynamic process that incorporates the combination of well-being and illness and is described as the awareness of the nursing client throughout his/her life span. This perspective focuses on the whole nature of the recipient of care based on the physical, aesthetic, social, and moral realms since health is not only contextual but also relational. Wellness or well-being is viewed as lived experience of similarity between a person's possibilities and realities and is centered on caring and feeling cared for. On the other hand, illness is described as lived experience of any dysfunction or loss that can be intervened through caring relationships. Notably, the level or extent of an individual's health is a demonstration of the mutual interactive process between a person and his/her environment.

Nursing:

As a discipline and practice profession, nursing is the science and art of complete health care that is directed by several values such as choice, human freedom, and responsibility. As a concept of nursing metaparadigm, nursing can be regarded both as a profession and practice. As a profession or discipline, nursing is a body of knowledge developed through theoretical development, logical evaluation or analysis, and research.

As a practice, nursing is realized through therapeutic nursing interventions that depend on the creative use of body of knowledge in providing nursing care. The therapeutic nursing interventions are based on theories, which guide and enhance the nursing practice. When providing the interventions, professionals in this field use critical thinking and clinical judgment to provide evidence-based care to nursing clients. The interventions are usually geared towards achieving helping the community to achieve an optimal level of wellness and well-being in different nursing contexts or settings. One of the most important aspects of providing nursing care is clinical judgment skills because of their essence in professional nursing practice.

The nursing profession basically focuses on helping nursing clients and communities achieve the optimal level of wellness and health. Therefore, the moral ideal and central focus of this discipline is human caring, which is a process involving a commitment to the lived experience of the client and community. Since it also incorporates concern and empathy, the individual nurse is involved with clients throughout life as an active partner in human care relationships and transactions.