PRINCIPLES OF STEWARDSHIP

AND ROLE OF NURSES

AS STEWARDS

Santos, Richelle Anne B.

Umlas, Michaella V.
BSN 1-2
Principles of Stewardship
Stewardship requires us to appreciate the two great gifts that a
wise and loving God has given: the Earth, with all its natural
resources and our own human nature, with its biological,
psychological, social, and spiritual capacities.

This principle is grounded in the presupposition that God has

absolute Dominion over creation, and that in so far as human
beings are made in God’s image and likeness, we have been given a
limited Dominion over creation and are responsible for its care.
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Principles of Stewardship
▪ STEWARDSHIP refers to the expression of one’s responsibility
to take care , nurture and cultivate what has been entrusted to
him.
▪ In health care practice, STEWARDSHIP refers to the execution
of responsibility of the health care practitioners to look after,
provide necessary health care services, and promote the
health and life of those entrusted to their care.

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Traditional
Definitions of Stewardship
Traditional Definition
The parable of ‘talents’ in the New Testament describes
another aspect of stewardship in which a master divides
his worldly goods between his three servants. The moral
portrayed in this parable is that when one is entrusted
with something of value, there is an obligation to
improve on it.

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State-Orientated
Definitions of Stewardship
State-Orientated Definition
The broad definition of state-orientated stewardship is that
the function of government is responsible for the welfare
and interests of the population, especially the trust and
legitimacy with which its activities are viewed by the
general public.

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The Metaphor
of a Steward
A steward is
characterized as a person
who preserves and
promotes what is
intrinsically valuable.

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The Metaphor of a Steward
In the eleventh century, the English word ‘steward’ developed
from the term stigwaerd, meaning warden of a house.

Welchman asserts that stewardship is a role individuals adopt

towards some other; She also stresses that to be a steward is ‘to
devote a substantial percentage of one’s thoughts and efforts
to maintaining or enhancing the conditions of some thing(s),
person(s), and not primarily for one’s own sake’. She suggests
that stewards are motivated to act as they develop character
disposition(s), including self-discipline and courage.
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The Metaphor of a Steward
Paterson’s conceptualization of stewardship may be relevant to
nursing leadership at the point of service.

Specifically, he identifies two frameworks of stewardship – the

dominant and the keeping – as a means to interpret the actions
of a steward in relation to the environment.

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Domination Framework
In natural resource management, as well as in theology, the
domination framework is premised on the belief that the earth
exists to serve the needs of people; it is ‘an instrument for human
purposes’.

Paterson contends that a hierarchy exists between humans and

non-humans, in which the former have a higher rank that the
latter, who serve the former. Within the domination framework,
stewardship aims to develop natural resources for economic
benefits.
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Keeping Framework
Paterson argues that exploitation and depletion of the environment
has given rise to the keeping framework, which is premised on the
belief that the environment has an ‘intrinsic value’, as well the
notion that humans and non-humans are interconnected.

In Paterson’s terms, stewards ‘till and keep’ the environment; or, as

he explains, stewards serve and preserve the environment.
Paterson stresses that all persons are mutually responsible for the
well-being of the environment, and that serving the environment
not only entails sacrifice but embraces a balance between the
satisfaction of self-interests and the needs of the environment. 13
Nurse Leaders
as Stewards
Nurse Leaders as Stewards
Stewards, as well as practising nurses who seek to preserve and
promote values at the point of service, may influence managers in
their decisions about who ought to receive what services and how,
and thus influence change in health care organizations.

French urges nurse leaders to ‘engage others and work

collaboratively to establish and achieve a vision and purpose’
that affects the well-being of a system or organization rather than
promote their self-interests.
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Nurse Leaders as Stewards

She backs up her assertion by observing that leaders are

either:
 Orientated to self - reflects the value of
individualism,
 Oriented to the organization or system - reflects the
value of collectivism.

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Nurse Leaders as Stewards
Self-orientated leaders perceive themselves as the decision
makers and others as implementers.

In contrast, system-orientated leaders who hold as their priority

the well-being of the organization show respect to all its members.
The system-orientated leaders in health care organizations will
hold the point of service as their priority and seek the input of
nurses in setting collective values.

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Nurse Leaders as Stewards
In order for nurses to influence decision making at the point of
service, there is a need to invigorate nursing leadership.
Storch urges nurses to establish health care environments that
promote values-based nursing practice by recognizing that
who one is – one’s moral character – is essential to leadership.
Similarly, Kowalski and Yoder-Wise identify character as a core
characteristic of a leader.
In addition, Parse writes that leadership is grounded in the leaders’
qualities.
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Nurse Leaders as Stewards
Specifically, stewards may facilitate nurses in articulating their
value priorities and thus preserve and promote nursing
practices that are intrinsically valuable. Nurse leaders need to
examine how this may be done using character, dialogue, and
particularism and universalism as criteria for the justification of
shared priorities, as well as how the process may be safeguarded.
MacIntyre and Habermas, as political theorists, offer contexts to
think about how nurse leaders who exercise stewardship may
facilitate nurses’ articulation of shared value priorities.
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Role of Nurses
As Stewards
The Stewardship of Self
To meet the domains of stewardship in health care
and the nursing profession, it is crucial that nurse
leaders engage with the development of self.
Succession planning to develop and nurture a new
generation of transformational nurse leaders may
be the only way to achieve this.

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The Stewardship of Self
To meet the concept of lifelong learning, nurse
leaders or stewards will need to use of mentors
and personal coaches to assist them in refining
skills and improving competencies. Healthy nurse
leader stewards will thus become visible and
sound role models within their institutions to
maintain the balance between self and
professional fulfilment.
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 1.
PERSONAL
Virtue Ethics in Stewardship
MacIntyre, a communitarian theorist, contends that a person
is a narrative self who seeks purpose, or good for the self,
through interpretations of everyday experiences.

Virtues are central because they affect perceptual judgements

about what is relevant in an experience. A virtue is defined as
‘a quality which enables an individual to move towards the
achievement of a specific human goal’.

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Virtue Ethics in Stewardship
Character or identity is cultivated as virtues are habitually
exercised.

In cultivating a character, a person acts without knowing the

exact outcome of his or her actions; rather, he or she acts in
the belief that the action will be worth while.

It may be argued that character affects the preservation

and promotion of what is intrinsically valuable in one’s
experience owing to perceptual judgements.
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Virtue Ethics in Stewardship
One’s character influences his exercise of judgement as he
gains a discerning insight into the good(s) or his values, and
thus justification of his value priorities.

In addition to asserting that stewards till and keep the

environment, Paterson stresses that all persons are mutually
responsible for the environment’s well-being.

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Virtue Ethics in Personal Stewardship
A nurse who exercises stewardship at the point of service in
accordance with MacIntyre’s theory of virtue ethics will
facilitate nurses’ justification of their shared value priorities
within professional settings such as the Canadian Nurses
Association code of ethics.

Thus, stewards and nurses may preserve and promote what

is intrinsically valuable in nursing practice. It may be argued
also that, as stewards facilitate nurses’ discernment of
embedded values, nurses will increasingly balance self-
interests with service to others. 27
The Potential of Stewardship
in Society
The potential for improving and enhancing policy
outcomes is the predominant positive potential of
stewardship. Another prospect of stewardship is to
revive a sense of social purpose among public
sectors of management, together with assisting to
restore a sense of trust and legitimacy to the role
of the state.

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 2.
SOCIAL
Social Role of Nurses As Stewards
Health care has been identified as Canadians' number one
public priority - and nurses play a central role in delivering
health care.

Nurses advocate for health promotion, educate patients and

the public on the prevention of illness and injury, provide
care and assist in cure, participate in rehabilitation, and
provide support. No other health care professional has
such a broad and far-reaching role.
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Social Role of Nurses As Stewards
Nurses help families learn to become healthy by helping
them understand the range of emotional, physical, mental
and cultural experiences they encounter during health and
illness. Nurses help people and their families cope with
illness, deal with it, and if necessary live with it, so that
other parts of their lives can continue.

Nurses do more than care for individuals. They have always

have been at the forefront of change in health care and
public health. 31
Social Role of Nurses As Stewards
Nurses innovate. Florence Nightingale, regarded as the
founder of modern nursing, is remembered as "the lady
with the lamp" - yet she also collected data to prove that
the main cause, by far, of fatalities in the Crimean War was
not enemy fire, but infections attributed to improper
sanitation.
She was a pioneering statistician, probably the first person
in history to use graphs and charts to persuade politicians
to act. Today's university-trained nurses learn to trust their
own first-hand observations to generate important research
leads on significant topics. 32
Social Role of Nurses As Stewards

Nurses provide ongoing assessment of people's health.

Their round-the-clock presence, observation skills, and
vigilance allow doctors to make better diagnoses and
propose better treatments. Many lives have been saved
because an attentive nurse picked upon early warning signs
of an upcoming crisis like cardiac arrest or respiratory
failure.

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 3.
ECOLOGICAL
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Ecological Role of Nurses in
Stewardship
The nursing profession is well positioned to tackle the
challenges of waste reduction within hospital systems.

The healthcare sector generates a massive amount of waste,

contributing to environmental issues, such as air and water
pollution.

By unifying and engaging staff through shared governance

models, nurses can reduce the overhead costs associated
with waste management. 36
Ecological Role of Nurses in
Stewardship
Nurses have the ability to use their trusted skill sets and lead
the way for sustainable, healthy communities and
environments in which they serve.
▪ Current healthcare waste disposal methods.
▪ Nurses comprise the largest profession in health care and
are adept at educating, researching, and leading in waste
reduction.

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 4.
BIOMEDICAL
Biomedical Role of Nurses in
Stewardship
Bioethics (Greek words: bios means life and
ethos means behavior) is a branch of applied
ethics that refers the discipline dealing with
the ethical implications of biological research
and applications especially in medicine. It
involves issues relating to the beginning and
end of human life.
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What shall be the role of
the nurse in a case in
which parents of a
severely deformed newborn
child refuse to feed and allow
their child to starve to death?
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Biomedical Role of Nurses in
Stewardship

Withholding nutrition can constitute nursing

neglect and expose the nurse to criminal
charges of negligence or conspiracy to
commit suicide.

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Thanks for
Listening! BSN 1-2

▪ Santos, Richelle Anne B.

▪ Umlas, Michaella
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References:
▪ http://www.sajcc.org.za/index.php/SAJCC/article/view/125/130
▪ https://www.mcgill.ca/nursing/events/today
▪ https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/05a9/2acef534d27d585a7e8d0c7de6cc0aa03843.pdf
▪ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5775118_ Nursing_ and_ the_ art_ of_ stewardship
▪ https://my.enmu.edu/c/document_ library/get_ file?uuid=e05f956e-09e8-4007-8421-
7e5e630a65c0&groupId=4153058&filename=sbmurphy-nur508.pdf
▪ https://www.disabled-world.com/definitions/bioethics.php
▪ http://web.uchile.cl/archivos/uchile/bioetica/doc/compt.htm
▪ https://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/tools/princpl.html
▪ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737121/pdf/TONURSJ-3-39.pdf
▪ https://cjon.ons.org/cjon/22/3/environmental-stewardship-nurse-s-role-sustainability

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