Patient autonomy and provider worldview in healthcare decisions

¶ … individual person?

Much of this would be dependent on individual patients, in relation to their mental capabilities and understanding of the aspects concerned with their healthcare. I even support giving minor children a say in their healthcare, at least as far as they can comprehend those aspects and judge sensibly. With increased expert input, they experience greater control and exhibit greater likelihood of wholeheartedly participating and conforming to mandates that help improve their health status. Individuals feel significantly different about their care if healthcare providers allow them to voice their thoughts, feelings, and ideas, instead of being treated like little children or someone with impaired mental faculties, unable to decide aspects of their own healthcare. This forms another reason for my strong support of Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders and living wills. In fact, I even have my own living will specifying precisely what I desire in the event I am totally unable to convey, at that moment, what I desire. Further, I have healthcare proxies, aware of how vital it is for them to stick to my requests and plans. I am wholly confident they will fulfill my instructions to the letter (Kathryn, 2009).

How does your personal worldview influence your approach to patients?

The surer one is regarding one's beliefs and preferences, the more successful and peaceful one will be. The term 'beliefs' is used to denote assumptions one makes with respect to oneself, other individuals, and one's expectations of things around us. That is, beliefs revolve around how one perceives the actual state of things to be, what one believes is the truth and, hence, what one anticipates to be the potential effect or result of one's behavior. Expert neuro-linguistic practitioner, Jemie Smart, claims that one can take beliefs to be an example of 'feed-forward' systems which organize and filter information for proving themselves as true. Beliefs represent precious resources, generalizations individuals employ for feeling sure about things and the grounds for making decisions in a confusing, complex world.

The term 'worldview' simply denotes one's interpretation of the truth (i.e., what one feels is true). All individuals hold a particular worldview, and although it is greatly impacted by the opinions, thoughts and feelings of individuals one interacts with, observes and reads about, everyone possesses a distinctive view of what happens around them.

As numerous elements at the practitioner, patient and healthcare structure levels play a part in health inequalities, worldview-related constructs intersect with other psychological and social considerations (e.g., collectivist, determinist, locus of control, and so forth). Each has the potential to play a role in health inequalities. For example, if a migrant population having disproportionate TB rates holds the overall, collective view that every sickness originates from a supernatural source (and, therefore, needs to be dealt with using supernatural means), one may expect all individuals belonging to that population group to delayed attention of their first diagnosis. This worldview portrays a complex, comprehensive image of life, which includes its import and meaning that healthcare providers must not neglect and which can't easily be extracted to form individual health-related views (Tilburt, 2010).

What constitutes the environment?

The term 'environment' may be used to describe everything external and internal to an individual, marked by cultural, physical, social, spiritual, intellectual, political, and ethical components. No person lives in isolation; instead, all connect and interact with other people, communities, and families in an ever-evolving society, influenced by and themselves influencing their environment. An examination of the effect sociopolitical, economic, legal, and ethical factors has on individual patients, communities, and families marks a key professional nursing activity.

How does illness relate to health?

Health and sickness both form extremities of the health continuum. The concept of health is vague owing to its subjectivity; it is not merely a lack of illness at a given point in time. The health sector maintains the assumptions listed below with regard to health: 1) Health is dynamic; 2) It can be established objectively as well as subjectively; 3) It represents ideal functioning of body, spirit and mind; 4) It denotes afeel of completeness; 5) It represents self-integrity; 6) It is a wide-ranging concept; 7) It deals with coping adaptively; 8) It is becoming and growing; and 9) Health denotes a subjective experience.

What is the central reason for the existence of nursing?

Nursing aims primarily at providing sound patient care and improving people's QOL (quality of life) by means of health education. Its core lies in the meaning of care. The profession of nursing believes that caring exists within sincere relationships wherein every involved individual is nurtured and respected. In these co-developed relationships, caring makes individual, community and family change, cure, wholeness and development possible (Stevenson University, 2016).