Personal Values

       Values are important in all areas of life, but they are especially important to develop within the context of nursing. Developing values helps the nurse understand himself or herself better, and these values can be used to guide practice. My top four values are dependability, empathy, expressiveness, and openness.

       Dependability is, I believe, one of the most important values a nurse can have. Patients are placing their lives in our hands and we must be able to follow through on patients’ expectations. Dependability includes punctuality, keeping promises (but not making promises that cannot be kept), and completing tasks that are expected of you. While I value dependability, admittedly it has been something I have struggled with over my life, and I plan to make a life-long goal of improving my dependability.

       Empathy is another quality that I value as a nurse. I also mention this in my philosophy statement, and I truly believe it is important to empathize with all individuals. I know that when I start practicing in the field I will not like all my patients. Many of them will have negative attitudes, be impatient, pushy, and overall unpleasant. These patients can be easy to brush aside, but as nurses we have to remember why they are there. Patients are not in a clinical setting because they want to be; often they are scared and confused. No matter the background or attitude of a patient, it is important to try and understand what they are going through and find a common ground to provide the best possible care. In my clinical placement this semester, I was able to differentiate the "good" Personal Support Workers (PSWs) from the "not so good" PSWs by their level of empathy. While all the PSWs at the long-term care home were competent and ethical in their care, the PSWs I looked up to and really admired had expressed a high degree of empathy to the residents. Moving forward, I will try to recreate this level of empathy and caring in my own practice.

       Something else I value is expressiveness. I have always been a very expressive person, not afraid to hide my emotions or my desire to sing and be myself in public. This is important in nursing as it improves spiritual and emotional health. Expressing yourself prevents negative thoughts and emotions from bottling up inside. Keeping too much in can have a severe impact on your own health, which can in turn negatively affect the health of the patient. Additionally, expressiveness reveals personality and individuality, which are both important to incorporate into nursing. Without expressiveness, personality, and individuality in nursing, all it is is a series of routine treatment and procedures, which is not conducive to healing.

       Lastly, I value openness. This is similar to expressiveness as it prevents bottling up of emotions. However, it is different in that openness involves honesty and the offering of yourself to others. As a nurse, I will be offering myself to patients, and in turn I will hope they will offer themselves to me. I believe that openness in the patient-nurse relationship allows for effective communication and consequently effective treatment. In the past, when I have closed myself off to those closest to me, I felt anxiety and toxic emotions building up inside. Residents and patients are at their most vulnerable and are required to be physically open to healthcare practitioner - something that was very evident in my placement at long-term care. To make these experiences more tolerable for residents and patients, we must be open and accepting. It can be difficult to be open but I truly value it and believe it maximizes emotional health.