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Roles Based on Patterns of Knowing

Scientist: Skillful use of facts, standards, principles, laws, theories, models, descriptions, and methods to inform the nurse's understanding of the human health experience.  The nurse as scientist seeks to find order and meaning in all human experiences.

Artist: Skillful use of a creative imagination, sensitive spirit, intuitive sensing, and critical intellect to gain insight into understanding of the human health experience.  The nurse artist seeks to know the unique and highly personal perceptions of the other and creatively uses knowledge and abilities to respond to the other.

Carer: Skillful development of relationships with the other based on a caring philosophy and expressed as one's being with, being there, creation of opportunities for fullness of being, and transcendent togetherness.  The nurse as carer co-creates a unique authentic relationship with the other that is liberating and emancipatory.  We have created this word because is more clearly reflects a reciprocal relationship between nurse and other than currently accepted terms such as care provider or care giver.

Ethicist: Identifies the situational and relational dynamics within moral decision making and views intersubjectivity and mutuality as the moral foundations for the relationships.  The nurse as ethicist collaboratively assists the other to become aware of possibilities when discerning values within certain situations and on the basis of self examination to reach decisions which express reaffirmed values; perhaps recreate a different complex of values (Gadow).

Citizen: One who continually identifies the underlying social-political dynamics of phenomenon (i.e., poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, isolation, alienation, and suffering) precipitated through the structures of society and influencing the other's human health experience.  The nurse as citizen identifies how the social, cultural, economic, and political milieu influences practice.

May Include:

Change Agent: Bringing about an alteration in the health delivery system to enhance the level of wellness of individuals, families, groups and/or communities.

Educator: Using purposeful interpersonal behaviors directed towards facilitation of learning.

Resource Person: Using knowledge of health, illness and community services, to assist the client to identify, access and interpret health systems and services.  The nurse's role includes coordinating the plan for reintegration into the community
 

Client Advocate: Serving as liaison between clients and the health care system.  As the client advocate, the nurse acts to assist the client in obtaining solutions to problems, concerns, and unmet needs.

Researcher: Using the principles of scientific inquiry to clarify and expand the scope of nursing practice.

Manager: Coordinating and integrating resources through the processes of planning, organizing, directing and controlling to meet specific institutional goals and objectives.

Leader: Using interpersonal processes to facilitate the attainment of individual and/or group goals.

Care Provider: Using nursing actions which promote health and wellness and/or resolve problems of illness through the application of human caring.

Environment: All that interacts with the individual, but is not the individual as depicted by the background of the diagram.  The dotted line around the two layered circle reflects the interconnection of the environment with all else.  The context of the individual's life journey, including significant others, society/culture, and the energy fields of all things, both animate and inanimate.

Advanced Practice: Preparation at the Master's level with advanced clinical knowledge, skills and using independent decision making, problem solving and critical thinking to manage and/or treat a wide range of health problems.  Uses advanced communications skills, therapeutic interventions, and various roles to provide collaborative care based on nursing knowledge, theory and research.

Professional Nurse: A person who has completed baccalaureate nursing education and uses the patterns of knowing in nursing.  Meets the requirements for safety in the performance of nursing practice.  Demonstrates the qualities of competence, empathy and congruence.  Creates, when possible, conditions for transpersonal healing to occur.  Enjoys a lifelong commitment to learning, inquiry, and excellence in the profession.

Nursing:

Noun: An altruistic, emerging, autonomous health profession comprised of nurses - created and supported by public demand for caring services in the human health experience.
Verb: Nurse caring for the purpose of promoting the human health experience.

Congruence: Congruence occurs when the nurse exhibits genuineness between the internal experience of feelings, the awareness of feelings and the expression and/or communication of feelings.