Professional Presence and Influence Professional presence is something of a nebulous concept. Before this course, I honestly never considered what it was and how my nursing practice was defined by it. During my journey through this course I discovered what it truly meant. “Presence is an intersubjective encounter between a nurse and a patient in which the nurse encounters the patient as a unique human being in a unique situation and chooses to spend her/himself on the patient’s behalf’’ (Wingate, 2007). Presence defines how a person interacts with those around them, and particularly in the healthcare field, it’s incredibly important.
A1. Two models of health and healing
In the history of modern medicine, practitioners have evolved
B’s problems stemmed from the fact that she had been apathetic towards her care.
A2 – Differences between a model of health and my professional presence
The physical body model and my professional presence differ greatly. As previously discussed, the physical body model maintains that every illness or disease has a physical cause and solution. It fails to take into acknowledge the brain as something that can negatively impact your health. My belief is that the mind can have a significant impact on how a person recovers from illness and generally stays healthy. Depression, stress, or apathy can seriously decrease your general state of health and can significantly extend your recovery time from a severe illness or injury, if not make it completely impossible.
When I have a patient, I focus on the physical and mental aspects of their health. After a patient has had open heart surgery, it is important to get them up and moving as much as possible in order to get their body back on track. It is important to have them take their new medications and have them understand why they need them. It is equally important to nurture their mental health. Many patients after surgery have a feeling of helplessness and loss of control. When they do this, I feel it is important to find things to give them a positive outlook – celebrating successes, getting family involvement, etc. Once I even had a family member bring the patient’s dog to our healing garden at the