The Nursing Process

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC, 2008) highlight that the care of patients must be a priority and to treat them as individuals. In order to achieve this nurses must use a systematic technique known as the nursing process when planning and delivering care. It originated in the USA and was introduced the UK in the 1970's in an attempt to move nursing away from traditional and task oriented care, to more evidence based and holistic approach to care (Castledine, 2011). It was clearly defined in 1967 when Yura and Walsh published a book called The Nursing Process, which identified 4 strategic stages that nursing care, should follow (Roper at al 2000). These are assessment; planning: intervention and evaluation, each of these stages will be discussed in more depth later in this paper. In this paper the author will also aim to describe what holistic care is and how each of these 4 stages helps the nurse to achieve holistic patient care in clinical practice.
To provide holistic care in daily practice the nurse must recognise that the person that they are caring for is a unique individual with individual needs. Berglund (2010) calls for the nurse to respect patients' individuality and to treat them as human beings. Patients’ medical conditions are often the same or similar with the same clinical treatments, however the nurse should never assume that these patients have the same needs. Treatments or procedures that work for one patient may not necessarily work for another, therefore finding a balance between individual care and routine care is seen as a way of enhancing patients general well being, trust and quality of care (Persenius et al. 2009). The rationale for providing holistic care is that the patient is a whole not merely a condition and holistic care embrace's the mind, body and spirit. It gives equal weight to each of these elements, while accepting that when either the mind, body or spirit are comprised there will certainly be an imbalance in the other