Definition of Nursing – Nursing is a profession within the healthcare sector focused on the care of individuals, families, and communities so they may attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and quality of life. Nurses may be differentiated from other healthcare providers by their approach to patient care, training, and scope of practice. Nurses practice in many specialisms with differing levels of prescriber authority.
Definition of Nursing
According to World Health Organization (WHO)
“Nursing is an art and science based on knowledge, skill, and attitudes, aimed at assisting the individual, family, and community in health and illness, to maintain health, to prevent illness, to alleviate physical, biological and psychological pain, to avoid complication and to fulfill self-reliance in meeting daily health needs.”
According to Florence Nightingale
“What nursing has to do is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him”
(Another Definition According to Florence Nightingale) Florence Nightingale defined nursing over 150 years ago as
“The act of utilizing the environment of the patient to assist him in his recovery”
According to the International Council of Nurses (ICN, 2003):
Nursing encompasses autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups, and communities, sick or well, and in all settings. Nursing includes the promotion of health, prevention of illness, and the care of ill, disabled, and dying people. Advocacy, promotion of a safe environment, research, participation in shaping health policy and in patient and health systems management, and education are also key nursing roles.
Another definition of nursing by ICN, according to the belief of Virginia Henderson (1966)
“Nursing is the unique function of the nurses, that is, to assist the individual (sick or well) in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge”.
According to the American Nurses Association (ANA):
Nursing is the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, facilitation of healing, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, groups, communities, and populations.
Shetland (1965) defined nursing as “The process by which a nurse uses particular skills and knowledge to assist another individual to identify and deal with health and illness needs”.
Read More….