The ANA defines nursing as “the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, communities, and populations” (American Nurses Association website, n.d.).
The 4 metaparadigms of nursing are person, environment, health/illness, and nursing. All 4 are interrelated and describe the central interest of the nursing discipline (Gunther, 2011). The ANA addresses the 4 concepts in its definition of nursing.
The person is central to the ANA definition. Nursing considers a person as a whole and not only the present illness. The nursing process allows a nurse to focus on a patient as an individual. In defining nursing, the ANA addresses the concept of The Person when referring to “the individuals, families, communities, and populations” (ANA website, n.d.). By collecting pertinent data, nurses identify patient’s current responses and the ability of that person to manage his/her care, and are then able to make clinical judgments about individual, family, or communities’ response to health problems or life processes. …show more content…
Nursing is concerned with human responses as they relate to the person’s environment whether it is in the hospital or in the community. With the help of the nursing process, nurses assess the person’s environment through the collection of subjective and objective data, perform risk assessments, identify safety hazards, and implement safety practices that will improve the patient’s health status and prevent further injury or