Fundamental care guided by the Careful Nursing Philosophy and Professional Practice Model©.

Abstract

To propose the Careful Nursing Philosophy and Professional Practice Model© as a conceptual and practice solution to current fundamental nursing care erosion and deficits. There is growing awareness of the crucial importance of fundamental care. Efforts are underway to heighten nurses' awareness of values that motivate fundamental care and thereby increase their attention to effective provision of fundamental care. However, there remains a need for nursing frameworks which motivate nurses to bring fundamental care values to life in their practice and strengthen their commitment to provide fundamental care. This descriptive position paper builds on the Careful Nursing Philosophy and Professional Practice Model© (Careful Nursing). Careful Nursing elaborates explicit nursing values and addresses both relational and pragmatic aspects of nursing practice, offering an ideal guide to provision of fundamental nursing care. A comparative alignment approach is used to review the capacity of Careful Nursing to address fundamentals of nursing care. Careful Nursing provides a value-based comprehensive and practical framework which can strengthen clinical nurses' ability to articulate and control their practice and, thereby, more effectively fulfil their responsibility to provide fundamental care and measure its effectiveness. This explicitly value-based nursing philosophy and professional practice model offers nurses a comprehensive, pragmatic and engaging framework designed to strengthen their control over their practice and ability to provide high-quality fundamental nursing care.