Nursing theorists Essay Example

Nursing theorists Essay This chapter consists of five parts namely: (1) Background and Theoretical Framework of the Study, (2) Statement of the Problem and the Hypothesis, (3) Significance of the Study, (4) Definition of Terms and (5) Delimitation of the Study. Background of the Study and Theoretical Framework Since early times, the nursing profession has evolved in response to the changing needs of society. Globalization has altered the structure of the society which resulted to the emergence of new nursing habits, standards, customs, values and knowledge in response to the health of the population. Nursing education has been grounded in research associated with value orientation and a professional standard of practice. Therapeutic nursing interventions are supported by the middle range theories and accompanying research and a culmination of how the world views the profession and nursing practice. Nursing theorists through time had improved the standards of nurses and health care delivery and also the expectation that care should be based on compassion, observation, and knowledge. Florence Nightingale, considered as the founder of modern nursing, specifically defined the nature of nursing clearly as distinct and not subservient to medicine, as a calling, as an art and science requiring specific education. Humanity has considered nurses to be ‘the most trusted people’ because the values of confidentiality and privacy have long been rooted. We will write a custom essay sample on Nursing theorists specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Nursing theorists specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Nursing theorists specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Nurses are also expected to emanate the values of humanism and holism that have long been integrated in the foundation of nursing. Values are standards or qualities considered worthwhile and desirable. Values are also closely tied to the self since they act as guiding principles in one’s life and motivate and guide behaviour to the degree those values are important to the self (Hitlin, 2003; Hitlin Piliavin, 2004; Verplanken Holland, 2002). A person’s value system is composed of broad beliefs developed through early learning, upbringing and socialization within the family and later at school, with peers and through life experiences and work. The cultural context in which this develops is also very important. Attitudes are underpinned by values, which are broad and less specific than attitude. Values underpin an individual’s ‘philosophy of life’ which is then applied to everyday life. They may relate to moral, ethical or religious issues as well as health, gender roles, family life and environment (Emerson, 2007). In the nursing profession, nurses are sometimes faced with ethico-moral and legal issues that may question their own beliefs and values. Also, they are expected to preserve the values and prestige that have been set by earlier nursing models. Today’s nursing students are considered as the future’s nurses. It is embedded in the core values of nursing education the right attitude of a professional nurse. The reality is that the nursing faculty are the gatekeepers of the profession and they retain the ultimate responsibility for determining whether students are competent to graduate and enter the profession. According to the study of Belo (1997), significant differences in values orientation were noted between nurse-educators. The older nurse-educators classified according to age and work assignment. The older nurse educators showed to show more preference to personal competence values than the younger nurse educators. Factors such as age, work assignment and family responsibility were found to significantly predict values orientation among nurse educators. Nursing educators serve as role models to nursing students and must therefore impart the proper values needed in order for them to become better nurses in the future. Through the identification of the set of values to which nursing students live by significantly predicts reasons for student’s behaviour, degree aspirations and commitment to school-related activities and this has motivated the researchers to pursue such study. Rokeach Values Theory Milton Rokeach drew attention to the fact that social psychologists tend to ignore the ignore the concept of value, favoring instead to focus on the psychology of attitudes. He saw values as general beliefs that are more abstract than either attitudes or specific beliefs. Attitudes and specific beliefs are associated with particular objects and events, whereas Rokeach proposes that values transcend objects and situations. He conceptualizes values as the general beliefs that people hold about desirable and undesirable modes of conduct and end states of existence. Thus, honesty as a mode of conduct might be preferred to dishonesty; honesty is seen as desirable and dishonesty as undesirable. Equality, as an end state of existence of general goal, might be preferred to inequality; it is seen as more desirable than inequality. Values, therefore, involve general beliefs about what is to be preferred in relation to desirable versus undesirable ways of behaving and desirable versus undesirable general goals. He called the former types of values, instrumental values, and the latter types, terminal values. Note, however, that Rokeach does not view values as â€Å"cold† beliefs. He argues that people usually feel strongly about their central and will protect and defend them, as is evident when these values are challenged or frustrated, when people are confronted by difficult moral choices, when they become involved in personal and social conflicts of various kinds, and when their values are satisfied and fulfilled. Rokeach assumes that values are relatively stable properties of persons but are not unchanging across the life span. Some values that are important for an adolescent may not be so important for an older person. Indeed they may be superseded by other values that become more important as a person takes on new roles and responsibilities, such as moving into labor force and raising a family. Rokeach proposes that the antecedents of values can be traced to culture, society and its institutions, and to personality. He states they are: the joint results of sociological as well as psychological forces acting upon the individual – sociological because society and its institutions socialize the individual for the common good to intenalize shared conceptions of the desirablel psychological because individual motivations require cognitive expression, justification, and indeed exhortation in socially desirable terms. The consequences of values are many and various. They function as standards Our study is anchored on Rokeachs Values defined the value concept as â€Å"an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence†. The publication of Rokeach’s book The Nature of Human Values caused a surge of empirical studies which investigated the role of human values in many branches of psychology and sociology. In the last decades, human values have been investigated in divergent scientific domains such as political ideology, e. g. Rokeach, 1973), personality assessment e. g. (Heaven, 1993), moral reasoning e. g. (Weber, 1993), or process and outcome of psychotherapy, e. g. (Kelly, 1990). In these and many other studies the Rokeach Value Survey (RVS), an instrument which was designed by Rokeach to operationalize the value concept, has been used as an instrument for measuring personal and social values. The popularity of the RVS results f rom the fact that Rokeach’s (1973) definition and instrumentation of the value construct is more coherent and psychometrically sound than other instruments currently available (Kelly, 1990). The RVS distinguishes two kinds of values: instrumental, referring to modes of conduct and reflecting behavioral characteristics that are seen as socially desirable and terminal, referring to end states of existence or ultimate modes of living which have been idealized. This study presumes that the values orientation of senior nursing students of West Visayas State University is influenced by the interplay of certain factors illustrated in Figure 1. INDEPENDENT VARIABLEDEPENDENT VARIABLE Personal Factors: Values orientation of senior nursing students of West Visayas State University -Sex Religious Affiliation -Socio-economic status -Ordinal Rank in the Family Environmental Factors: -School type of high school affiliation -Family type Figure 1. Values orientation of senior nursing students as influenced by certain factors. Statement of the Problem and the Hypothesis This study aims to determine the values orientation of senior nursing students of West Visayas State University. Specifi cally, this study aimed to seek answers to the following questions: 1. What is the values orientation of the senior nursing students of West Visayas State University? 2. Are there significant differences in values orientation among nursing students of West Visayas State University according to: (a) Sex, (b) Religious Affiliation, (c) Socio-economic status, (d) Ordinal rank in the family, (e) School type of high school affiliation (f) Family type? In view of the aforementioned problems, the following hypotheses were advanced: 1. There is no significant difference in values orientation among nursing students of West Visayas State University according to: (a) Sex, (b) Religious Affiliation, (c) Socio-economic status, (d) Ordinal rank in the family, (e) School type of high school affiliation (f) Family type. . There is a significant difference in values orientation among nursing students of West Visayas State University according to: (a) Sex, (b) Religious Affiliation, (c) Socio-economic status, (d) Ordinal rank in the family, (e) School type of high school affiliation (f) Family type. Significance of the Study This study will benefit the students in inc reasing their awareness of themselves; on what values they are anchored to as to which their behaviors and attitudes reflect. By giving them such awareness would help them consider the values and right attitude of a nurse that they should portray. It would assist them in considering the career choice they have made and pondering on what kind of nurses in the future would they be. According to Johnson Halstead (2005), there is little doubt that a relationship with students is characterized by openness, mutual respect, and a collaborative approach to learning will reduce the potential for problematic or adversarial experience. In connection to this, the nursing faculty will also benefit from this study as this will serve as a basis for the modification of the faculty’s teaching strategies in order to meet the personal qualities of the student. This will increase the awareness of the faculty in order for them to adjust sanctions, policies and regulations to improve student performance and attitude. The ability of the faculty to personalize their approach to students in the learning environment surely contributes to the quality of teacher-student relationships and to the overall value of the learning experience. The Board of Nursing and the Commission of Higher Education will also benefit from this study in the light that it will give them insight on the nursing students’ value orientation that they may adjust or incorporate value-laden subjects in the curriculum in order to produce better nurses. Health Institutions The community Definition of Terms For purposes of clarity and understanding, the following conceptual and operational definitions of the key words in the present investigation will be defined: Values – something as a principle or quality that is intrinsically valuable or desirable. Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary of English Language  © 2001) Orientation the act or process of orienting or of being intellectually, emotionally, or functionally directed. (Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary of English Language  © 2001) Values Orientation the principles of right and wrong that are accepted by an individual or a social group. (Retrieved September 18, 2009 from http://www. dictionary. com/values) In this study, values orientation is referred to as set of human values to which senior nursing students of West Visayas State University live by. This values act as a guide for their specific behaviors. Senior Nursing Students – In the study, a senior nursing student would mean any person who is currently enrolled in a Bachelor of Science in Nursing Curriculum level four at the West Visayas State University. West Visayas State University – West Visayas State University will be the institution where the research will take place. Delimitation of the Study This study aims to determine the values orientation of senior nursing students of West Visayas State University. This study will be conducted on October-November 2009 and the participants of the study will be the 118 out of 170 senior nursing students of West Visayas State University. The sample size will be determined using the formula for solving sample size by Lynch (1979, in Ardales 2000) The stratified random sampling will be used to determine the participants. This descriptive-correlational study considered sex, religious affiliation, ordinal rank in the family, socio-economic status, school type of high school affiliation and family type as independent variables; values orientation as dependent variable. The data needed for this study will be gathered through the Rokeach Value Survey (Rokeach, 1973). To describe the data gathered, frequency, percentage, the mean scores and standard deviation will be used. For inferential analysis, the t-test for independent samples and One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) will be employed. All inferential statistics will be set at . 05 alpha. Pearson’s r set at . 05 alpha levels will be used for correlation.