Major Assumptions:
1. Nursing
2. Person/Cultural Being
3. Health
4. Environment/Culture of Organization
2. Person/Cultural Being
3. Health
4. Environment/Culture of Organization
Nursing
Nursing
is a holistic, relational, spiritual and ethical caring that seeks the good of
self and others within complex community, organizational and bureaucratic
cultures. The foundation of spiritual-ethical caring is love. Caring is
cultural and social and encompasses beliefs and values of compassion, love,
justice, or fairness in the social realm where relationships are formed and
transformed. Caring is unique lens through which health choices can occur and
where understanding of health and healing emerge. Through compassion and
justice, nursing strives toward excellence in the activities of caring in
dynamic complex cultural contexts of relationships, organizations, and
communities.
Person/Cultural Being
A
person is a spiritual and cultural being. Persons are created by God, the
mystery of being, and engage co-creatively in human organizational and
transcultural relationships to find meaning and value.
Health
Health
is a pattern of meaning for individuals, families, and communities. In all
human societies, beliefs and caring practices about illnesses and health are
central features of culture. Health is not simply the consequence of a physical
state of being. People construct their reality of health in terms of biology,
mental patterns, characteristics of their image of the body, mind and soul,
ethnicity and family structures, structures of society and community
(political, economic, legal, technological) and experience of caring that give
meaning to lives in complex ways. The social organization of health and illness
in the society (the health care system) determines the way people are
recognized as sick or well, the way health or illness is presented to healthcare
professionals, and the way health or illness is interpreted by the individual.
Thus, health is intimately connected to the way people (including nurses) in a
cultural group, an organizational culture, or a bureaucratic system construct
reality and gives and finds meaning.
Environment/Culture of Organization
Environment
is a complex, spiritual, ethical, ecological and cultural phenomenon. This
conceptualization of environment embodies knowledge and conscience about the
beauty of life forms and symbolic (representational) systems or patterns of
meaning. These patterns are transmitted historically, preserved, or changed
through caring values, attitudes and communication. Functional forms identified
in the social structure or bureaucracy (political, legal, technological,
economic) play a role in understanding the meaning of caring, cooperation, and conflict in human
cultural groups and complex organizational environments. Nursing practice in
environments therefore exemplifies the spiritual and ethical patterns of
meaning as well as the elements of the social structure.