Pattern Recognition from Margaret A Newmans Theory of Health as Expanding Consciousness - Research Paper Example

? Concept Analysis: Pattern Recognition from Margaret A. Newman’s Theory of Health as Expanding Consciousness (HEC) Inthe recent years, medical and allied health literature has reported pattern recognition as a non-analytical process of clinical reasoning. Hypothetico-deductive reasoning dominated as an approach to clinical problem solving until the pattern recognition was introduced with observations that are of higher efficiency and accuracy. This paper aims at carrying out a detailed analysis of the concept of Pattern Recognition from Margaret Newman’s theory of health as Expanding Consciousness using the Avant and Walker model of analysis. Concept Analysis: Pattern Recognition from Margaret A. Newman’s Theory of Health as Expanding Consciousness (HEC) Some people perceive health as the state or condition where there is the absence of a disease or disability, an assumption which triggered Newman into developing the theory of Health as Expanding Consciousness (HEC) (Newman, 2002). In most cases, these people who include those with health uncertainties, incapacitated, and eventual death; are usually associated or relate with nurses. Over the years, the concept has developed and it incorporates all people regardless of the presence or absence of a disease and/or a disability. The development of the HEC theory is attributed to Martha Roger’s theory of Unitary Human Beings, which holds that “patterning of persons in interaction with the environment is basic to the view that consciousness is a manifestation of an evolving pattern of person-environment interaction” (Newman, Gaines, and Snare, 2005). Newman’s theory affirms that the universal process of expanding consciousness should encompass all types of people in every kind of situation regardless of their disabilities and hopelessness. Newman describes this process as that which makes one realize who they are and become one, helps a person to find some sense in living, and that which enables one to reach a new height of connectedness with the rest of the people and the world in general (Newman, 2008). Purpose of and Research Methodology Analysis of a concept is usually to provide the reader with a clear understanding and a detailed description of the concept in question, in this case, pattern recognition (Avant and Walker, 2005). This analysis can be done via implementation of a variety of analysis methodologies. However, this paper employs an analysis methodology developed and presented by Avant and Walker (2005). It identifies operational and theoretical definitions, definition of characteristics of the concepts, identification of the antecedents and the consequences associated with the concept, examination or evaluation of cases in which the concept has been utilized and finally providing empirical referents to the concept. The Concept of Pattern Recognition According to Newman (2005), this concept makes a key component of the relational process of Health as Expanding Consciousness (HEC). In addition, Newman (2005) asserts that a series of visits unfolds the uniqueness of health patterning. Here, a special attention is paid to the development of whatever is required to be the outcome of the relationship that emerges between the nursing practitioner and the patient or client. Identification of patterns occurs in stages via the process of praxis rather than the whole process occurring once (Newman, 2005). Currently, the pattern of life of every person contains past information and probabilities of future occurrences. When a client decides to visit a nurse, it is obviously because things have slightly or extremely changed from the usual and thus he or she requires an alternative regarding the client’s situation. The relating process of the clinician and the patient or client is a key facilitator to understanding of the patterns of a person. According to Newman (2005) the goals of pattern recognition include: Helping the client see and understand the current patterns Helping the client understand the type of rules that will come forward Helping clients move to a new way and understanding of being. Upon identification of a clear action, the client-clinician relationship comes to an end. On the other hand, the relationships established in a family practice context are usually non-ending. Newman believes that the pattern recognition process should be non-stop. She asserts that there is a need for a whole understanding; a process which involves understanding different stages and the overall pattern of the lives of the client and the clinician (Edwards, Jones, Carr, Braunack-Mayer, and Jensen, 2004). The process is on-going during which there is unfolding of pattern recognition that is in process and stops with the completion of the situation and action taken after which another pattern recognition level unfolds. In essence, what Newman tries to point at in this argument is that no matter the age of the people, their sex and or their culture, there is always a thing to discover, unfold, and integrate. According to Newman, the pattern recognition process incorporates personal knowing, i.e. knowing yourself and others’ self through interaction, which ensures one finds a meaning in life and other human experiences via the continued efforts of becoming aware of one self, and knowing the moment and the context of the interaction. It is during these interactions that one is able to recognize certain patterns or trends of behaviors in human counterparts, usually through the client-clinician relationship. According to Australian (2008), the clinician always tries to involve the client in personal stories and autobiographies so as to convince or make the client say something about themselves willingly. Newman describes this pattern recognition process as a throughout life process after which one’s unique self can be expressed more fully and can be deliberately accessed and acted upon. Uses of the Concept This theory (nursing) provides the language, worldview and the concepts that help conceptualize the process of nursing care while at the same time providing a framework that informs how, when and why to use a given option and complementary modalities (Haun and Kettner, 2005). Margaret Newman’s concept of Pattern Recognition offers the nurses a conceptual framework over which the modalities are applied based on recognition of patterns of archetypal expressions in therapies that produce a lot of insights such as dream interpretation, Tarot counseling, astrology and guided imagery. This concept involves client insights and an explanation of how this insights result in increased awareness which happens to be an essential element of growth and development (Newman, 2008). In machine language and/or learning and the computing world, pattern recognition has a different meaning as it represents an assignment structure where a given label is assigned to a particular value of input, for example, classification, which allocates each value of input to each one of the given set of classes. In medical science, pattern recognition is the root to computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems that support the interpretations of findings by doctors (Higgs and Titchen, 2000). Other areas of applying the techniques of pattern recognition include auto-recognition of postal codes on envelopes that are handwritten, automatic recognition of speech, automatic recognition of faces of human beings, categorization of text into various categories, and extraction of images and handwritings from medical forms. Attributes of Pattern Recognition These are the characteristics that underpin pattern recognition to the earlier description and also offer potential benefits to the client-clinician relationship development. They include: i. Knowledge – an individual’s knowledge, both propositional and non-propositional, are essential in recognition of a particular pattern in a clinic. Newman (2003) argues that the basis of pattern recognition is a good and highly organized knowledge structure. ii. Categorization – categorization can be viewed as the putting together of objects or events as a way to understanding pattern recognition (Newman, 2003). This is basically comparing two or more discernable cases, objects or events. For a clinician to identify a certain trend, one has to find the similarity that exists between separate although similar cases and hence can be regarded as a type of categorization. iii. Accuracy – previous suggestions point to direction of reasoning as a major influencer of the accuracy of the decision made by an expert clinician. Past research shows that there are relations between accuracy of diagnostic performance and forwards reasoning. In diagnosis that is entirely based on visual perceptions, associations have been drawn between diagnostic accuracy and case feature recognition from a past case (s). According to Newman (2002), this provides support for the visual patterns thus facilitating PR accuracy. A clear association is yet to be established between PR and accurate outcomes in forward or rather diagnostic reasoning. The probable link between the two is of no doubt sophisticated and highly dependent on the structures of knowledge and the experience of the clinician. Model Case According to Avant and Walker (2005), a model case is an example of the concept in use which defines all the attributes of the concept. (p. 69). In addition, they feel that it represents a pure case of the concept, an untainted exemplar or a prototype. The concept of Pattern Recognition (PR) can be shown by the efforts of Dr. M. M. Libster (Australian, 2008). Dr. Libster, an Educator, Healthcare Historian, Herbal Diplomat and Advanced Practice Nurse, has worked as a clinician-consultant in Western and European herbal therapies, and Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine (TCM) for more than 25 years. During this period, she has acquired relevant knowledge and thus uses this broad knowledge of pattern recognition in nursing science and TCM to make specific remedies for specific clients. The fact that she has gained extensive knowledge about her clients and their specific needs means that she can be able to categorize the customers in groups respective to their specific needs. Dr. Libster has been doing this for more than 25 years with little errors or no errors at all. Accuracy is an attribute of pattern recognition that has no clear definition of how it can be achieved, although research shows that accuracy is an indicator to recognition of cues (Eva, 2004). Borderline Case This is a case that contains a number of the pattern recognition’s attributes but not all of them, or rather has most of the criteria but differs in a single criterion. This is an example of a borderline case. Mr. Be is a 65-year-old former ambassador of the UN diagnosed with cancer. His doctor made a recent discovery that cancer cells had spread to the right femoral bone. Valarie, a nursing student who takes care of Mr. Be found out that he always lay on his left side with his eyes closed with bent legs. It was his routine to pray either alone or together with a visiting family. Valarie frequently asked Mr. Be of his condition and if he was feeling any kind of pain but he repeatedly said he was doing fine and he was not in pain while appreciating Valarie’s concern. Valarie grew more curiosity when Mr. Be’s pulse rate and blood pressure increased. Normally, such a patient would feel pain and eventually ask for medication, but Mr. Be never asked which prompted Valarie to ask him and instead Mr. Be gave a biblical explanation of his level of suffering, indicating that is nothing compared to God’s suffering for his people. Valarie was able to note Mr. Be’s behavioral cues to know that he was in pain. In addition, Higgs (2004) noted that the presence of his family made him happy, showing the influence of social and family patterns on pattern recognition. Invented Case Invented cases of pattern recognition include speech recognition and optical character recognition (OCR) of hand or machine written texts, classification of text patterns, analysis of images, iris and fingerprint reading and identification of such patterns in images (Edwards and Jones, 2007). Antecedents and Consequences This represent the incidents or events that do not define an attribute but occurs prior to or after the occurrence of the concept (Avant and Walker, 2005, p.73). In this case, antecedents to pattern recognition include previous knowledge of a given situation and necessary experience in the specific field of application. In this case, Valarie’s previous knowledge that one should ask for medication when they felt pain made her curious and asked Mr. Be why he was not doing so. The concept has consequences too where the client and clinician grow more intimate and in cases of death, like Mr.Be, the nurse practitioner, in this case Valarie is left hurt (Ericsson, 2004). Empirical Referents The final phase of Avant and Walker’s model of concept analysis shows how to measure the concept of pattern recognition or rather the event that point to the existence of pattern recognition (Avant and Walker, 2005). Empirical referents show how the attributes of the concept exist in real life thus, analyzing the concept can be useful in instrument development. Effective PR is highly dependent on knowledge of the case in question, thus, for this case the behaviors of the clients are noted and clearly associated with previous cases in order to reach to a decision. Once these behaviors can be clearly distinguished from separate cases, a similarity is drawn between them and groups can be developed respective of each categorizing criteria (Norman, Young and Brooks, 2007). For a nurse practitioner to draw this lines between cases, then there level of accuracy should be very high thus, the ability of Valarie to analyze the situations to group this patterns as either social or family oriented and the impact each had on say the mood of Mr.Be. In summary, the concept of pattern recognition was chosen due to the inability to assess and evaluate accuracy using high fidelity model simulation. Little research or rather literature exists that supports the level of accuracy in the concept of pattern recognition. In addition, this study proves that prior knowledge to a case helps in pattern recognition and enhances the quality of decisions made by the nursing practitioner. References Australian Physiotherapy Association. (2005). Directory of APA Musculoskeletal Physiotherapists 2005-2006. APA: Victoria. Australian Physiotherapy Association. (2008). Specialisation. 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