Continuity In Nursing Practice

The hardest decision for medical students is narrowing their studies to a specific field. With so many different options, I researched several different fields that appealed most to me. With each field comes entirely new and unique training, but each practice is just as demanding as the next. After the long road of medical school and the selection of a practice is complete, each student must complete a residency. A resident student is a student with a medical degree, who is practicing their specific field under a licensed doctor. Generally, residencies last from 3 to 5 years and usually the final stage before one can practice on their own. Each step along the road to becoming a doctor is more and more competitive and demanding as the last.

Record-keeping and documentation are a hugely important part of nursing practice that unfortunately is often overlooked. Good record-keeping is in fact an essential element of being a good nurse. This assignment will discuss the importance of record-keeping in the healthcare setting. Record-keeping is vital for three main functions of nursing. It facilitates communication, promotes safe and appropriate nursing care and meets professional and legal standards (CRNBC 2008). These purposes and other important functions of record-keeping will be described in this assignment. The professional and legal implications of poor record-keeping will also be outlined. The topics will only be briefly and broadly discussed due to word count

anything thrown your way, yet sympathetic enough to be understanding of it. There is so much

enhances the continuity of nursing care through listing specific nursing action necessary to achieve the goals of care.

Colon cancer is a lethal disease and remains one of the leading causes of cancer related deaths in the United States (Williams et al, 2016). Despite the overall decline in colorectal cancer (CRC), African Americans (AAs) continue to lag behind and have a higher prevalence, mortality, and the lowest survival rate among any other racial group (Williams et al., 2016). For this reason, some professional organizations recommend screening for AAs start at the age of 45 rather than age 50 (Jackson, Oman, Patel & Vega, 2016). However, endorsement of earlier screening among AAs alone does not equate to an increase in the uptake of CRC screening.

This experience is meant to act as both training and knowledge, and puts residents into direct contact with other residents, patients, doctors and nurses, and the family members of those that depend on quality care. Although residents will be making decisions and actually treating patients, there is always someone “senior” to ensure that things are done properly and in the best interests of those involved. The goal is to provide residents with the experience necessary to allow them to be successful when they practice on their own, but this comes at a

The activities include physical and occupational therapy, nutrition counseling, and case management ("Community Health Nursing," 2013).

“Continuous quality improvement is a philosophy that encourages a healthcare team to continuously ask: ‘How are we doing?’ and ‘Can we do it better?’ More specifically, can we do it more efficiently? Can we be more effective? Can we do it faster? Can we do it in a more timely way? Continuous improvement begins with a culture of improvement for the patient, the practice, and the population in general” (NLC, 2013). Having a continuous quality improvement initiative is a to construct a design to tackle an evaluation of a current procedure being used and improving the process to be able to attain a desired outcome.

As a nurse participating in health policy development is very important, not just for health care workers, but patients as well. Nurses should make sure that they are informed on the issue at hand, before making a permanent decision on which way to vote (Cherry & Jacob, 2014). Staying current on all policies issues is a challenge within itself. There are many different strategies that may be utilized to help nurses to be informed. Nurses should join professional organizations, which can assist with staying current. Many of these organizations publish magazines/newsletters and provide conference opportunities that concern current issues (American Nurses Association, 2016). Also, attending seminars and workshops can help to obtain the needed

Lack of succession planning among the nursing workforce is expected to have a rippling affect across all care settings and worldwide in the years to come. Research supports that nurse manager's actions have the potential to influence outcomes in all care settings (Titzer, Phillips, Tooley, Hall, & Shirley, 2013). Presently, the nursing workforce is experiencing higher levels of turnover among first line managers than among senior leadership positions (Titzer et al., 2013). Organizations are encouraged to conduct gap analyses to project vacancies in key positions related to retirement and advancement (Titzer et al., 2013). Organizations are also encouraged to employ strategies to identify and grow internal human capital to facilitate

Transition theory is one of the most applied theories in the nursing practice. In fact, whether or not nurses are aware of this theory, it is often used in the nursing practice because nursing is all about helping people that are going through changes, whether they are physical changes like an illness or developmental transitions like the birth of a child. Meleis reiterates this point as he states “Nurses often are the primary caregivers of clients and their families who are undergoing transition. They attend to the changes and demands that transitions bring into the daily lives of clients and their families” (2000, p. 13). Before going any further in exploring Transition theory, we must define transition. Meleis states that “Transitions are both a result of and result in change in lives, health, relationships, and environments” (2000, p. 13). Transitions are the times when a nurse can step in and act as a therapeutic medium and help the individual have a smooth transition from one semi stable state of being to another semi stable state of being (McEwen & Wills, 2014, p. 237). This is the essence of Transition Theory. It is the process that goes on between people undergoing some changes in their lives, and the nurse who is guiding care for a stable outcome.

In this article, the definition of intention to leave is described as the employee’s dissatisfaction with the job that may or may not urge him or her to change jobs. In this study, the aim was to assess both the intention to leave and the post-exit choice. Some determinants that were considered to contribute to nurse turnover in particular were components such as the dissatisfaction with supervisors, pay and benefits, and job satisfaction in general. Another component is the work-home interference, which is defined as a form of a role-conflict in which work and family pose different demands on the nurse. The possibilities for nurses to learn new skills, and their career development opportunities also play as a key component in the reason to

This theory with the five core characteristics such as skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback. This approach will affect the three major the work outcome when the theory helps the nurses to understand responsibility for the results and experience the autonomy to make the decision for the motivation of their potential skill variety, and to understand how effective of their work according to their feedback to adjust their knowledge or their skill. This theory will help the nurses feel more confident and know how to improve in giving quality care to patients and satisfy with their jobs.

In the healthcare field, nursing leaders and managers face consistent issues in their respective practices that force them to alter the way they work and the way they think. In taking on a role as a leader within the field, nursing leaders and managers also take on the role of ensuring that work within an organization runs smoothly regardless of new issues that may arise in the healthcare arena. For instance, in today's healthcare environment, the issues of nurse shortage and nurse turnover have the capacity to alter the healthcare field and many of its respective branches and organizations should these problems not be managed properly by the leaders in the field. In viewing the issue at hand and in discovering how nursing leaders and managers are expected to act, and do act, in order to approach this issues, along with pinpointing the best approach possible to aid this issue, one can better understand which leadership styles are necessary for leaders to function.

As far back as Florence Nightingale, professionalism and ethics have been the cornerstone of nursing practice. “Ethical values and practices are the foundation upon which moral actions in professional practice are based” ( LaSala & Bjarnason, 2010). Core professional nursing values (CPNV) are taught and instructed upon in nursing programs. This paper will explore and define the CPNV of altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity, and social justice. Although these values are all individual characteristics, I will show that they are all intertwined in the path of care that an ethical practicing nurse walks every day with her patients, without even thinking about it.