The feeling of commiseration is entrenched in ancient philosophies and it is translated into the Christian fate through the potential for sensing compassion for other human beings (Elgie, 2007). This sensation is part of a nurse daily activity and Elgie (2007) explains how it was actually the compassion feeling that determined him to pursue a career as a nurse male, giving people hope, faith and most of all, bringing joy on their lives for finding their or their loved ones’ healing, just like Jesus Christ generated the happiness and gratitude of the individuals with various illnesses, out of kind-heartedness, and out of love for humans.
Nursing implies devoting oneself to others through love. Therefore, the process of healing the ill ones includes besides the actual healing science the compassion for the human kind and implicitly the love or caring for a sick person, as Harper (2001, in Elgie, 2007) defines the nursing activity.
Nevertheless, nursing implies good stewardship, which is reflected through leadership actions for mentoring staff and preparing them for the activities that it consists of (Williamson, 2009). This is transmitted through organizational vision and culture and through shared values (Williamson, 2009), but all these are instilled through stewardship.
In nursing, stewardship is applied by knowing how to care for people with the purpose of providing health for them or maintaining their health (Elgie, 2007). Although taught and transmitted, stewardship in nursing tends to become something instinctive, entrenched in the nurses’ behavior, attitude, beliefs and personality.
Stewardship is the land where hard and soft skills combine (Elgie, 2007) and in nursing this means having the technical competencies for handling human health problems, but also the interpersonal skills for adjusting to different types of human personalities, such as versatile communication style or the ability to improve one’s temper and mood, to determine people to think positively. This is also a Christian value, based on the principle that believing in something leads to healing.
In the Advanced Practice Nursing, attitudes such as “It’s not my job” or “why should I care attitude” (Williamson, 2009, pp. 1-2) does not exist, because the practitioners are aware of their roles and responsibilities and most importantly, they have in their hearts the compassion for others and the desire to make them feel better, out of shared human feelings and values (Elgie, 2007).
While describing the Advanced Practice Nursing, Barker (2009) notes that the purpose of practicing nursing is to make people benefit of the specific activities involved in this job. Nevertheless, this purpose is included in the ethical code upon which the nurses guide for performing their activities. Therefore, relating to nursing activity, stewardship is contoured on an ethical guide, which regulates the nurses’ actions. This adds to their individual moral that drive them toward performing good actions for others and it provides a set of actions that they must follow in order to provide both sincere human heartedness and also strict guidelines about the procedures that they should follow for healing people. Nevertheless, while there are ethical aspects that nurses apply while professing, Elgie (2007) observes that nursing is flexible, as it is based on patterns, unlike the medicine profession, which relies on medical diagnoses. The ethical aspects, connected with the flexibility of the profession also lead to the formation of the stewardship in Advanced Practice Nursing, which is often governed by Christian fate that preaches kind-heartedness and caring for others and on the intention to make good deeds, for others to benefit of them.
References
Barker, A. (2009) Advanced practice nursing: essential knowledge for the profession. Sudbury, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, LLC.
Elgie, R. (2007) “Nursing and the art of stewardship” MEDSURG Nursing. Vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 344-345.
Williamson, R.M. (2009) Mastering the art of stewardship. Columbus, Strategic Work System, Inc.
