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The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the experiences I gained as a nursing student at St. Joseph's Health Centre. I will utilize the nursing meta-paradigm (Fawcett, 1996) as a framework for integrating the concepts of person, environment, and health in my practice. Further, I will discuss Parse's (1981, 1998, 2007) theory of humanbecoming and how it has guided and influenced me as a nurse and a person in the development of my personal philosophy.
I was previously a nurse in China, where I did not read or learn anything about nursing theories and the nursing meta-paradigm in my nursing education.
The healthcare system in China is very medically oriented and nurses' role is to monitor signs and symptoms of common diseases, perform technical skills such as intravenous injections, change wound dressings, and administer medication to the patients. Now, in Canada, I had an opportunity to go to nursing school again and update my knowledge about nursing. At York University, I have taken courses and developed a great deal of appreciation about nursing. Courses on nursing ethics and nursing theory influenced me in various ways and changed my way of practicing with clients. During the theory course, I read nursing theories for the first time. I was most impressed with Rosemarie Rizzo Parse's (1981, 1998) theory of humanbecoming. Parse recognizes that persons are unique individuals and says that the goal of nursing is quality of life from the person's perspective. Her theory guides nurses to care for the person by being truly present, illuminating meaning, synchronizing rhythms, and mobilizing transcendence (Parse, 1998). Parse's theory guided my nursing practice and changed my personal philosophy of nursing by influencing the way I think about person, health, and environment.
Parse's Theory of Humanbecoming
Parse's (1998, 2007) theory of humanbecoming consists of three principles and nine concepts that flow from her assumptions about humans and becoming. Three major themes have surfaced from the philosophical assumptions: meaning, rhythmicity and transcendence (Parse, 1987). Each theme leads to a principle in the theory and each principle contains three concepts. The nine concepts are imaging, valuing, languaging (first principle); connecting-separating, revealingconcealing, and enabling-limiting (second principle); and powering, originating, and transforming (third principle). The goal of practice is quality of life...