Nurses must prioritize and make decisions based on clinical judgment to provide the best outcomes. The nurse carries a heavy responsibility to provide safe, holistic, patient-centered care to every patient in his or her care. The four elements that make up a good nurse cannot be turned off. These qualities are a part of a nurse’s everyday personality. I chose the nursing profession because I have a desire to help and care for people.
The most dominant characteristic overall that being a nurse requires is resilience. Nurses must resist the symptoms of stress and be able to quickly recover from difficult situations. A study in the book Support for Caring and Resiliency Among Successful Nurse Leaders, supports the practice of self-care, responsibility, and reflection to increase resilience (Dyess, Prestia, and Smith 108-110). Self-care involves attending to self-cues by listening to the body to maintain balance. For instance, having a job in the health department can seem never-ending, and as a result pushes clinicians to continue working until the job is finished, despite how tired and possibly burnt out he or she is.
Most definitions of professionalism are vague and extremely open to interpretation. For instance, Oxford 's learning dictionary defines professionalism as "the high standard that is expected from a person who is well trained in a particular job. Merriam-Webster 's online dictionary defines professionalism as "the conduct, aims, or qualities that characterize or mark a profession or a professional
It is argued that time is of the essence in nursing practice. Nurses are put under a lot of pressure on a daily basis. There is a view that nurses have very little time and are very busy that they forget to deliver care and empathy towards a patient to make the patient feel ‘cared about’ (Corbin, 2008). Additionally, nurses not only have to nurse their patients on a daily basis, but they have to accomplish other tasks, for example documenting, filling out paperwork and management, as well as performing certain goals needed to be achieved that day (Beckett, 2013). Pressure on nurses has increased dramatically due to the lack of funding which has led to clinical environments being under staffed and in effect each individual nurse is therefore carrying out the duties and pressures of two nurses (DeCola and Riggins, 2010).
Teamwork, helping each team members to give their best effort is a crucial role for a nurse leader. As a leader, he or she needs to set clear standards, so that the team will know precisely what is expected from them in terms of work, quality and safety. The nurse leader’s role is to strive to uphold high but practical standards. The team members need to have clear understanding on ‘why’ and ‘what’ they need to do to achieve the objectives and it is the nurse leader’s role to ensure explanation is given to the team to gather their support. It is important to get the team members involvements by getting their ideas and opinions.
Importance of nurses A nurse is a health care professional who is engaged in the practice of nursing. Nurses are men and women who are responsible (along with other health care professionals) for the treatment, safety and recovery of acutely or chronically ill or injured people, health maintenance of the healthy, and treatment of life-threatening emergencies in a wide range of health care settings. Nurses may also be involved in medical and nursing research and perform a wide range of non-clinical functions necessary to the delivery of health care. Nurses develop a plan of care, sometimes working collaboratively with physicians, therapists, the patient, the patient 's family and other team members. In the U.S. (and increasingly the United Kingdom), advanced practice nurses, such as clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners, diagnose health problems and prescribe
They are always available to teach the junior nurses and counsel whom necessary, the nurse leader is a mentor, a critical thinker, creative, problem solver, a change agent, a role model, a communicator and a decision maker. The nurse leader is not bias in handling crisis between the nurses, her or she develops himself or herself in their chosen career in order to learn more and become knowledge in effective nursing care. Our nurse leaders are able to protect the nurses and their interest by enforcing policies that will benefit all the nurses. USEFULNESS OF THE CONCEPT TO THE CURRENT
Nursing Profession Paper Several self-reflective thoughts come to mind in responding to the query ‘what does it mean to think like a nurse’. The first thought which comes to mind is that of critical thinking. A nurse that applies critical thinking to their accountabilities is a professional who is able to organize their situational understanding across a broad spectrum of patient interaction. One who can take into consideration all of the patient data available to piece together a solution and/or plan of action which is specific to their patient so to optimize the outcome. Someone that asks questions for discovery and better understanding so to further progress towards assessing the range for best and worst case patient scenarios.
As a nurse, patient communication is crucial. Nurses have more day-to-day contact with the patients than their doctors, so it’s up to the nurses to help patient understand their diagnosis and teach them how to participate in their recovery. Additionally being able to communicate and get the message across clearly for the nurse saves a lot of time and makes the workload a lot easier 14. Institutes or hospital with workers who have good interpersonal skill have a good reputation. Effective communications in a long run also benefits the health system as a whole by making it more efficient and cost effective.
Nurses need to see their roles as holistic and expand their view of nursing. We must learn other new skills that are considered integral to contemporary nurse practice. Nurses must be multi-disciplinary. The skills they need to acquire include emergency care, illness assessment, psycho-social nursing, counselling, behavioural science, health promotion, statistical analysis, advocacy, presentation skills, political activity and knowledge, marketing, publicity, family intervention and community needs assessment. Today, nurses should see themselves as prime movers for change.