Philosophy and Theory
Ways of Knowing Every moment in life, we are faced with serious health issues that leads to loss of lives in our world of today. The healthcare team, especially the nurses play a vital role in the restorative process of these patient, since they are the ones dealing with direct care to these patients. It is crucial in nursing to keep studying and applying knowledge to the everyday practice. In doing so, it is important to understand how to organize, test, and enforced knowledge to nursing. Barbara Carper identified four fundamental patterns of knowing in nursing which is required for the teaching and learning of nursing. Carper's four fundamental patterns of knowing in nursing are defined as “empirical, ethical, Aesthetics and personal” (Zander, …show more content…
Aesthetics are purely subjective, exclusive, and open to interpretation” (Zander, 2007, pp. 7-11) for example, Mr. Mark who is newly diagnosed with diabetes was not complying with his medication and diet. The nurse sits with the patient to figure out his concerns and discovered that the patient was not well informed about the changes in health status. The nurse explains to the patient the importance of managing his blood sugar, they both came up with a plan of care. At the end day, the patient was so happy with the nurse. Personal knowledge” involves an awareness of self and others in a relationship that is subjective, concrete, and existential and does not require mediation through language” (Zander, 2007, pp. 7-11). For example, a patient might be going to pain due to a sudden death of a loved one, the nurse applies personal skill knowledge through the reflection of past experience and demonstrates to the patient that she understands what he/ she is going through. The nurse also interprets some of their experiences as such aiding the patient to understand her