The notion of care is linked to the preservation or conservation of something or to the assistance and help provided to another living being. The term derives from the verb to care (from the Latin coidar ).
Nursing, on the other hand, is associated with the care and monitoring of a patient ‘s condition. Nursing is both said activity and the profession involved in carrying out these tasks and the physical place in which they are carried out.
Multiple actions are part of nursing care.
What is nursing care
Nursing care, therefore, encompasses various attentions that a nurse must dedicate to his patient. Their characteristics will depend on the condition and severity of the subject, although at a general level it can be said that they are aimed at monitoring health and assisting the patient healthily.
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When a person is admitted to a hospital (that is, when they must spend the night in the health center), nursing care will include serum control, monitoring of their vital parameters and the supply of medications indicated by the doctor, among other tasks.
Nurses can also, in some cases, travel to the patient’s home to provide certain care. That is the case of a nurse who visits an elderly person to give him a daily injection or to take his blood pressure.
A college or university degree
It should be noted that, to provide nursing care, it is necessary to obtain a degree that serves as a license. The characteristics of the training and qualifications depend on each country, since the nursing career can be tertiary or university and require different skills.
According to Virginia Henderson, an American disease born in 1897 who relied on physiology and psychology to theorize her own vision of nursing, nurses and nurses have the main function of caring for sick or healthy people to carry out the activities that collaborate with their recovery or to prevent them from suffering when their final hour approaches. Nursing care is a service that compensates for the lack of strength, knowledge or will, depending on the disorder.
Nursing care is complemented by care provided by physicians.
What needs should nursing care satisfy?
Henderson proposed a model that consists of 14 basic needs, which respond to his idea that all human beings have the same and that nursing care arises from analyzing them and finding ways to satisfy them. Let’s see a list based on these primordial needs :
* breathe normally;
* eat and drink properly;
* remove waste from our body;
* move and take care of our posture to avoid bone and muscle disorders;
* respect the recommended number of hours of sleep and rest during the day to make good use of energy and avoid excessive wear;
* choose the clothing that we want to wear at all times, according to the different variables that may be involved, such as the temperature and the type of activities that we must carry out, and put on or take off our clothes by our own means;
* maintain our body temperature, taking precautions such as wearing warm clothes, protecting ourselves from excessive cold and heat and setting our home;
* take care of the hygiene and integrity of each part of our body;
* avoid any practice that endangers us or harms third parties, directly or indirectly;
* express our needs and emotions, our fears and desires through communication with other living beings;
* in the case of religious people, carry out the practices they need to get closer to their beliefs and feed on their teachings;
* seek the satisfaction of feeling useful through the development of some productive activity, whether vocational or merely work-related, but that gives us something back and makes us feel independent and useful;
* have fun, play, participate in activities in which we feel pleasure and put aside our worries;
* study, learn, discover new worlds, explore knowledge driven by our curiosity, in order to develop our intellect.
