Nursing Concept: Health, Ontological Traditions, and Ethical Issues

Running head: NURSING CONCEPTS
Nursing Assignment
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1NURSING CONCEPT
Introduction
Nursing concept is usually defined as a rigorous and creative structuring of a range of
ideas that are found to project in a purposeful, tentative, and systematic observation of
phenomena. Although there was lack of formal nursing related knowledge in the early years,
with a development of nursing education, the requirement of categorising knowledge helped
in the development of different nursing theories that allowed the nurses to critically evaluate
complex situations that are encountered while caring for patients. Health has been identified
as a basic concept in nursing theory that is continually evolving over time (Cook & Peden,
2017). Traditional paradigms that are related to health, have disorders or illness as the
primary focus and have gradually emerged into multifaceted multidimensional models that
centre on a holistic and positive approach towards the phenomenon, commonly referred to as
health. This essay will elaborate on the health concept, in relation to different ontological
lenses, besides identifying ethical issues related to it.
Health: the nursing concept
Traditionally, the concept of health has had different meanings, depending on the
person, circumstances and time, during its definition. The word health was found to first
appear around 1000 AD, and denoted the condition or state being whole or sound. The
concept of mind-body dichotomy considered the body to function in the form of a system,
based on chemical and mechanical laws that could be distinguished from the mind. The onset
of the conception of disease or illness during the time of Hippocrates made people embark on
a journey that focused on unravelling the different causes of disorders (Lee et al., 2017). This
was followed by the conception of the germ theory of disease by Pasteur and Koch in 1800s.
However, in the words of Larsen (2017) it was argued in 1941 by Sigerist that health did not
just mean the absence of any illness, but represented presence of a positive attitude and
acceptance of life. This was followed by the formulation of different paradigms such as, the

2NURSING CONCEPT
ecological model and psychosocial model that placed a due focus on the interaction of the
body, society, and mind, for attaining good health. In other words, the concept of health is
fundamental to nursing and comprises of both physiological and mental wellbeing of a
person, the service user.
3 ontological traditions
The critical theory was established by several professors from the Institute of Social
Research during the 1920s and was supported well by the Marxist philosophical base. Marx
defined it in the form of a self-clarification that needs to be gained through the present time
of the desires and struggles. Considering nursing as a major discipline of dialectic nature,
upon imparting the theory, it should immediately be put to practice for accomplishing better
learning, via feedbacks (Gathercoal, Gathercoal, Seegobin & Hadley, 2017). Thus, the critical
theory provides for novel and broader exploration questions and holds the potential to
encompass the information base of nursing discipline. In the words of Mill, Allen and
Morrow (2016) the critical theory holds the potential of advancing the understanding of a
nursing professional of the collective organization of commonplace practice situations and
the ways by which they can be reorganized.
Nursing professionals who are found to adhere to the critical theory have often
elaborated on the necessity to advance the building of knowledge with an unshackling and
liberating determination, which allows the delivery of responses in a manner that helps in
approaching reality through a dialectic and global vision. The complexity theory refers to a
manner of understanding the communities and organisation that have been considered as a
method, existing within the healthcare management, in place of a nursing tool (Mitchell,
Jonas-Simpson & Cross, 2012). The term complexity theory is most commonly used
interchangeably with different terms, most particularly complex adaptive systems. It has been
defined by Plsek in the form of a gathering of discrete agents who are allowed to act in means