Understanding the Concepts of Person, Health, Environment, and Nursing

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

1
NURSING
Introduction
The following is a personal reflection of my personal understanding about different
concepts like person, health, environment and nursing. This will be followed by reflecting my
though process under the framework of Mezirow’s (1990). At the end, the reflective paper
will help in the identification of the paradigm identifications and rational for the paradigm
identification. Two paradigm of focus include totality and simultaneity as stated by Parse’s
framework (1987).
Person
I would describe a person as mammals that fall in the category of vertebrate with four
limbs. A body of a person deals with complex interplay of organs (physiology) and emotions
(psychology). From my practice setting I see person being admitted to hospital will problems
in the physiological mechanism or with other psychological issues like depression. Here
physiology signifies physical health problems like cardiovascular problems, diabetes,
pulmonary complications, high blood pressure, skin diseases, fractures or pain. Psychological
problems mean mental health problems. For example depression, anxiety, stress or other
complex mental health disorders like schizophrenia or dementia. Schizophrenia or dementia
however has physiological pathophysiology like complication in the neurons. Thus it can be
said the mental and physical health are inter-related. I have written this because, as per the
taxonomic classifications, human begins are vertebrates and are mammals (Wilson et al.,
2016). It is human begins that health is modified by both the physical and mental health. This
is the reason why I have defined a person as a combination of physiology and psychology.
Jogerst et al. (2015) stated that proper physiology and psychological well-being helps to
define a health individual.

2
NURSING
The definition of person stated by me belongs to the meta-paradigm of totality. This is
because; here the person is defined as a combination of physiological parameters and
psychological parameters. Thus a person is viewed as an integration of biological
psychological elements and hence coincides with the nursing meta-paradigm criteria of
totality. During my clinical experience, I have seen that an older adult was admitted in the
hospital after encountering cardiovascular accident (stroke). Surgical installation of the pace-
maker helped that person to recover from his problematic physiological parameters like
hypertension and irregular breathing of heart. However, his right side of the body
encountered paralysis. He was admitted in post stroke rehabilitation unit where physiotherapy
helped to recover from the paralysis but he was depressed as he was unable to perform his
daily living activities. Mindfulness based therapy along with regular counselling helped him
to recover from his poor mental health condition. Thus it helped me to understand both
physical and psychological health is important for faster recovery of the person.
Environment
I would like to describe environment as the surrounding in which we live. It
constitutes the air, trees, other animals, insects and the other people (neighbours) or the
family members with who we live and grow old. From my practice settings I have seen that
not only the trees, the air, the soil but in my clinical settings the behaviour received from the
nurses also influence the health of an individual or person (healthcare service users), Here the
nurses and the hospital ambience act as the surrounding environment. Here the hospital
ambience means the hygiene quotient of the hospital, behaviour exhibited by the nurse like
active listening and respecting the dignity of the patients. I have written this because Flott and
Linden (2016) stated that environment like the surroundings; social surroundings or socio-
economic surroundings help to define the health of an individual. Improvement in the socio-