The American Nurses Association (ANA), Nursing Social Policy Statement, emphasizes six essential features of professional nursing:

1. Provision of a caring relationship that facilitates health cna healing.
2. Attnetion to the range of human experiences and responses to health and ilness within the physical and social environments.
3. Integration of objective data with knowledge gained from an appreciation of the patient's or group's subjective experience.
4. Application of scientific knowledge to the processes of diagnosis and treatment through the use of judgement and critical thinking
5. Advancement of professional nursing knowledge through scholarly inquiry
6. Influence on social and public policy to promote social justice.

The purpose of nursing are as follows:

• To promote health, including emotional and social well-being;
• To prevent disease and disability;
• To provide environmental, physical, cognitive, and empotional support in illness;
• To minimize the conseqences of disease; and
• To encourage rehabilitation

See Griffith and White (6th Ed.), page 254.