The philosophical basis of nursing research is simply about increasing our knowledge and addressing everyday challenges through reflective thinking. This article explored the fundamental principles that inform nursing research and stresses nurse researchers' vital role in meeting everyday challenges. By employing classic philosophical concepts and contemporary ways of knowing, this article explained how individual beliefs, conceptions about truth, and reflections on self had contributed to knowledge development. To put it plainly, this article is about the story of a nurse researcher and the illustration of how a nurse's philosophy impacts research and consequently contributes to the development of nursing science. Instead of regarding this process as a quest for the ultimate truth, this article recognized the evolving process of interacting with fluid knowledge to advance nursing practice and do well in society.

Ethics ; Nursing

Spiritual care is recognized globally as an essential component of holistic nursing, however, in the Philippines it remains marginal and inconsistently practiced. Despite existing policies since 1984, affirming the nurse's responsibility to promote a spiritual environment, the absence of competency standards, curricular integration, institutional protocols, and evaluation mechanisms had left Filipino nurses ill-equipped to meet patients' spiritual needs. This gap undermines holistic care, weakens nurse–patient relationships, and perpetuates a biomedical focus at the expense of patient well-being.

This policy paper called for the development and adoption of a Philippine-specific, competency-based framework for spiritual care. Such a framework would translate abstract policy declarations into measurable practice by: (1) embedding clear competencies in nursing curricula and licensure examinations; (2) institutionalizing training, mentorship, and faculty development; (3) creating guidelines, tools, and referral systems for health facilities; and (4) integrating monitoring, evaluation, and research into quality assurance systems.

By aligning education, practice, and policy, this framework will normalize spiritual care as a professional nursing standard in order to enable Filipino nurses to deliver person-centered and culturally sensitive care, improve holistic health outcomes, and reaffirm the central role of spirituality in health and healing.

In this paper, I reflect on caring and witnessing through engaged ethnography of an urban poor community during the onset of the COVID19 pandemic. The urban poor are individuals and families who live below the poverty line in metropolitan areas, many of whom have little or no political voice and are insufficiently protected by social networks and other institutions. In March 2020, the government placed Metro Manila under Enhanced Community Quarantine to control the spread of COVID19. This left many an urban poor community in Metro Manila to struggle even more against an already precarious existence. By standard, nurses render different levels of care for urban poor clients in almost all health care settings. In public health nursing, we come in close contact to the realities of our clients when we see them in health centers, in the community, or whenever we do our home visits. Now, caring for vulnerable and marginalized groups such as the urban poor has changed due to minimum public health standards of wearing masks, physical distancing, handwashing, and enforcement of lockdowns. As a nurse, an academic, and as a student of anthropology, I came up for self-review while doing an article for a popular social news network derived from a virtually engaged ethnography. While this novel method requires you to see the world through the eyes of the “other,” and generates bioethical dialogue and awareness of personal biases in addressing ethical considerations and challenges, it gives voice and fulfills our roles as client advocates. In May 2020, the article was published with the urban poor organization and its partners as my coauthors. I borrowed from anthropology to arrive at a greater understanding of the socio-cultural effects and political implications of COVID19 to one of the most vulnerable nursing clientele – the urban poor.
Public Health Nursing ; Ethics, Research ; COVID-19

Scholarly article writing and publishing in international peer-reviewed journals can become an overwhelming task for many medical, nursing, and healthcare professionals in a university setting, especially in countries whose native language is not English. To help improve their scientific writing skills and publishing capacity, a university-based editing system and writing programs can be developed as educational platforms. These are delivered by a team of specialist editors composed of tenured faculty members who have a strong medical background and extensive experience in teaching courses on medical research, editing, writing, and publishing. For the editing system, the specialist editors provide comprehensive editing, personalized consultation, full editorial support after peer review, guidance with online submissions/resubmissions, and detailed editorial review at different stages of the manuscript writing. In addition, the specialist editors can develop writing programs such as medical writing and editing internships, academic courses in medical writing or research study designs and reporting standards, special interactive lectures and sessions on predatory publishing, seminars on updated editorial guidance of global editorial associations, academic visits on medical writing and editing, medical writing mentoring program, networking programs in scholarly communication, and publication resources in medical writing and scholarly publishing. These editing system and writing programs can serve as integrated platforms for improving scientific writing skills and publishing capacity by providing continuing education in medical writing, editing, publishing, and publication ethics.
Delivery of Health Care ; Education, Continuing ; Ethics ; Humans ; Internship and Residency ; Lectures ; Medical Writing ; Mentors ; Nursing ; Peer Review ; Publications ; Specialization ; Writing*

PURPOSE: This study was performed to identify the influence of nursing professionalism and campus environment on the perception of ethical sensitivity among nursing students. METHODS: A descriptive survey design was used for this study. The participants were 323 nursing students attending four universities in Busan and Kyungnam. Data collection was conducted from November 25 to December 25, 2017 using a self-report questionnaire. Data were analyzed using a t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe's test, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and stepwise multiple regression. RESULTS: The factors influencing ethical sensitivity of nursing students were identified as professional self-concept (β=.36), nursing role (β=.24), scholarship (β=.17), practicability (β=.17), and propriety (β=-.13). Five factors explained 40.5% of nursing students' ethical sensitivity. CONCLUSION: The results of this study can be used to develop further educational programs on nursing professionalism and campus environments for enhancement of nursing students' ethical sensitivity.
Busan ; Data Collection ; Ethics, Nursing ; Fellowships and Scholarships ; Gyeongsangnam-do ; Humans ; Nursing ; Professionalism ; Students, Nursing

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify the relationships among nursing students' knowledge, attitudes to advance medical directives and ethics values. METHODS: The study was a cross-sectional and descriptive survey, carried out with 232 students from two schools of nursing, one located in B and C city. Student nurses' knowledge, attitudes for advance medical directives and ethics values were measured using structured self-report questionnaires. Data were analyzed using t-test or one-way ANOVA, and Pearson correlation coefficients. RESULTS: The scores for knowledge, attitudes for medical advance directives were 7.18 and 3.07, and for ethics values, 3.47. Nursing students' knowledge and attitude showed a significant difference depending on grade. Nursing students' ethics values showed significant differences depending on whether a study on ethics had been completed. A positive correlation was observed between nursing students' knowledge, attitudes for advance medical directives and ethics values. CONCLUSION: The results of this study indicate that basic data for the development of an effective education program on ethics is important in establishing a positive attitude toward advance medical directives and the appropriate ethical values in student nurses.
Advance Directives ; Education ; Ethics ; Humans ; Nursing ; Students, Nursing

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify the influence of spiritual well-being, self-esteem, and perceived social support on post-traumatic growth in breast cancer survivors in Korea. METHODS: Data were collected from March 2 to October 31, 2016 using self-reporting questionnaires from 126 breast cancer survivors who had visited out-patient clinics for follow-up in B city. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson's correlation coefficient, and stepwise multiple regression. RESULTS: Post-traumatic growth was significantly correlated with spiritual well-being (r=.52, p < .001), self-esteem (r=.54, p < .001), and perceived social support (r=.47, p < .001). In a stepwise multiple regression, spiritual well-being (β=.26, p < .001), self-esteem (β=.23, p < .001), perceived social support (β=.21, p < .001), and presence of spouse (β=.20, p < .001) were associated with posttraumatic growth. These factors attributed to 37.0% of the total variance in post-traumatic growth in breast cancer survivors. CONCLUSION: Considering the results of this study, it is necessary to develop and implement effective nursing strategies that can improve spiritual well-being, and to develop a holistic nursing intervention that takes into account self-esteem, perceived social support, and spousal help, when applicable, in order to promote post-traumatic growth in breast cancer survivors in Korea.
Breast Neoplasms* ; Breast* ; Follow-Up Studies ; Holistic Nursing ; Humans ; Korea ; Nursing ; Outpatients ; Self Concept ; Spirituality ; Spouses ; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic ; Survivors*

PURPOSE: This study was aimed at identifying the types of perceptions of ethical issues among perioperative nurses. METHODS: Q-methodology focusing on individual subjectivity was used with data collected in November 2016. Thirty-four Q-statements were selected and scored by the 35 participants on a 9-point scale with normal distribution. Participants were perioperative nurses working in advanced general hospitals and general hospitals. The data were analyzed using the PC-QUANL program. RESULTS: total of 35 perioperative nurses were classified into 4 factors based on the following viewpoints: self-centered (type 1), onlooking and avoiding (type 2), patient-centered (type 3), and problem-centered (type 4). The 4 factors accounted for 57.84% of the total variance. Individual contributions of factors 1, 2, 3, and 4 were 41.80%, 7.18%, 5.20%, and 3.66%, respectively. CONCLUSION: The major contribution of this study is the clarification of perioperative nurses' subjective perceptions of ethical issues. These findings can be used in formulating effective strategies for nursing educators, professional nurses, and nursing administrators to improve ethical decision-making abilities and to perform ethical nursing care by the appropriate management of ethical issues in everyday nursing practice.
Administrative Personnel ; Ethics* ; Ethics, Nursing ; Hospitals, General ; Humans ; Nursing ; Nursing Care ; Perioperative Nursing ; Q-Sort

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to identify how nursing students' awareness of biomedical ethics and ethical values affect their attitudes towards a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order. METHODS: This cross-sectional correlation study was conducted with 275 nursing students enrolled at two universities in North Chungcheong Province and North Gyeongsang Province of South Korea. Data were collected in April 2017 using a self-reported questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient and stepwise multiple regression with the SPSS/WIN 23.0 program. RESULTS: The students' attitudes towards DNR were positively correlated with attitudes that seek ethical values but negatively correlated with their biomedical ethics awareness. The explained variance for attitudes towards DNR was 20%, which was significant (F=13.01, P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that nursing students' biomedical ethics awareness and ethical values were associated with their attitudes towards DNR. Curriculum organization and various educational programs should be developed and applied to help nursing students develop ethical values and awareness of biomedical ethics.
Bioethics* ; Curriculum ; Ethics ; Humans ; Korea ; Nursing* ; Resuscitation Orders ; Statistics as Topic ; Students, Nursing*