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Virginia Henderson’s nursing philosophy is known for its simplicity and inclusiveness. It centers around the patient with the nurse making him whole or complete. She says that the nurse is “a substitute for what the patient lacks” (1966, p. 21). In other words, the nurse is eyes for the blind and legs for the amputee. Her famous summary encapsulates well nursing’s breadth of function. The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to a peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge. And to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence as rapidly as possible. (p.21) Henderson delineated 14 patient activities that contribute to health or its recovery by which she felt the nurse could even evaluate her progress towards making the patient independent. These points include such things as number one, “Breath normally,” number three, “Eliminate body wastes,” and number five, “Sleep and rest” (1991, p. 22) (see Appendix for complete list). These points could also be viewed as patient needs; for example, the patient needs good air, sleep, and rest. To discover the patient’s real needs the nurse must first “get inside his skin” (Henderson, 1991), by imagining herself in the patient’s position and thinking about what she would need. Next, she should fill the patient’s needs while at the same time not doing for the patient that which he can doing for himself (National League of Nursing [NLN], 1989). The nurse must check her interpretation of the patient’s needs with the patient. (Henderson, 1964). Henderson viewed the nurse as an “…independent practitioner … as long as he, or she, is not diagnosing, prescribing treatment for disease, or making a prognosis, for these are the physicians functions” (1991, p. 22). She saw the nurse’s domain as being the authority in basic nursing care. She made these statements in her 1966 edition of The Nature of Nursing, and when she wrote addendums to each chapter of the book republished in 1991 she revised her understanding of the nurse’s role as “…givers of ‘primary health care,’ as those who diagnose and treat when a doctor is unavailable” (p. 33). She only intimates in this 1991 writing that nurses have an opportunity to serve by diagnosing and treating persons in underserved areas where physician care is lacking, but in a video interview in 1989 she is quite adamant that nurses should educate the public to view them as primary care givers.
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