Nursing Competency Paper

It has been a full week of the project being implemented. The issue that I have notice was the wrong timing of the competency. It was issued together with many other hospital MCstrategies that made the nurses overwhelmed. As the Jersey City Medical Center is now part of Barnabas Health a lot of changes and updates are happening including educating all the staff with the new policies and procedures, introducing new strategies to improve patient safety and satisfaction, and refreshing staff’s knowledge about skills. I spoke to the participants regarding the status of their competency, one nurse told me that “I will finish it by the set date; I am up to date with my MCstrategies”. Another nurse told me that she was doing the competency according to the due date and so far there are five more before the Leadership Lessons. Three of the day shift new nurses informed me that they are doing their re-issued MCstrategies first because they already know the answers. Among six nurses only one night nurse started the lesson as per our last conversation. Checklist wise, it is going as I expected most of the nurses are currently halfway.

Professional nursing practice has been developing for several centuries. Nursing as a profession can be traced back to the early Christian era. Since then the perception of nursing practice has changed significantly. “Nursing is caring, commitment, and dedication to meeting the functional health needs of all people” (Craven &

I am Amanda Selich, 27 years old, and have been living in San Francisco for roughly 10 years. I grew up in the East Bay with my 3 siblings and was raised by a single father. Much of my childhood was spent taking care of my younger siblings. This responsibility was so demanding I was forced to drop out of high school and become their “surrogate mother”. However at the age of 24 I was able to get my GED and finally attend college. In fact this past May I graduated from City College of San Francisco with highest honors in Science and Math.

The health care industry is experiencing a surge in the number of baby-boomers needing health care and increased demands on the physicians providing the care. This trend has made the role of Advanced practice providers more important (cite). It is imperative to understand the differences and similarities in the advanced practice provider roles as it pertains to healthcare. This paper will identify specialty nursing roles including advanced practice registered nurses (APRN). It will further compare and contrast the advanced practice nurse (APN) and physician assistant (PA) roles in practice.

Like most other professions, nursing is controlled by government regulatory agencies and professional organizations. For instance, boards of nursing in various states are the government entities mandated to regulate nursing at the state level, while the American Nurses Association is a professional organization that governs nursing at the nation level. Regulatory agencies and professional organizations are guided by the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

“Autonomous nursing practice as defined as full command of expert knowledge and allowing for accountability and authority in decision making” (Creasia & Friberg, 2011, pg. 47). A doctor will more likely see a nurse as a professional once they show competence and autonomy, which in turn, will provide a positive nurse-physician relationship due to the trust built between professionals. A physician must be able to trust a nurse’s judgment and assessment skills to be able to provide a collaborative care for the patient. The wheel of professionalism is designed to compare nurses' professional behavior with other professions, which places university-based education as central to professionalism, which then leads to a strong code of ethics, professional recognition and continuing education to maintain nursing competence (Yam, 2004). As a nurse achieves a status of professionalism, a nurse will view oneself as an equal partner in the health care team, which in turn will boost confidence and support for a more proactive and confident nurse.

After reading the Nurse of he Future Nursing Core Competencies (NOF), I believed it was created to help nurses used critical thinking when delivering care. Being a nurse had empowered me to know the important of critical thinking when caring for patients. “Nurses use critical thinking to integrate objective data with knowledge gained from an assessment of the subjective experiences of patients and groups, and to apply the best available evidence and research data to the processes of diagnosis and treatment”.

When deciding to advance a nursing career from registered nurse to an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse or APRN, there are many avenues to choose from. Advanced Practice Registered Nurse is a broad term for a Registered Nurse who has obtained at least a Master’s Degree in Nursing. Every nurse has different interests, and reasons for the type of nursing they choose; as well as strong suits in his or her specialty. For this reason it is important to research all education categories of APRNs. Categories of Advanced Practice Registered Nursing include Nurse Practitioners, Certified Nurse Midwives, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists, and Clinical Nurse Specialists. Each type of Advanced Practice Nurse has a broad scope of practice, giving a Registered Nurse who is looking to

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing has identified nine essentials that are incorporated into master’s nursing programs to help direct the practice of advanced practice nurses (APN’s). Essential II outlines how an APN can utilize organizational and systems leadership to promote safer and more cost effective care. By incorporating effective leadership skills, APN’s can help transform healthcare and make quality improvements for the patient, the institution, and the community. According to the American Association of College of Nursing (2011), an effective leader assumes and applies “the skills of communication, collaboration, negotiation, delegation, and coordination” (p. 11). APN’s must be able to establish and maintain a healthy

One the most important issues facing nursing these days is the changing healthcare insurance industry. I saw how these changes affected staff firsthand. I worked at Quincy Medical Center for three years until it closed in December of 2014. The Affordable Care Act led to cuts to Medicaid supplemental payments for the uninsured and has forced many hospitals to reduce staff or close like Quincy Medical Center. This is a concern for nurses because under current federal regulations there are no specific requirements for nurse to patient ratios. Multiple research studies demonstrate that lower nurse-patient ratios save both lives and money long term. For example, hospitals that routinely staff with 1-to-8 nurse-to-patient ratios experience five additional deaths per 1,000 patients than those staffing with 1-to-4 ratios, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. Higher nurse to patient traditions lead to higher burnout

Though the field of nursing is currently mixed with Associate and Bachelor prepared nurses, the Associate prepared nursing role was originally created in response to the need of nurses to fill a shortage created by WWII. Associate degree nurses were trained in a shorter period of time than a traditional professional nurse, in the skills of nursing in order to perform bedside care during the nursing shortage. (Berman & Snyder, 2012, pp.10-11) The Associate program was intended to be short-term solution to the immediate problem, ending with the shortage. Instead, however, Associate programs grew throughout the 1960’s becoming widely available at community colleges. Completing an Associate’s program would allow one to sit for the same NCLEX

The national league for nurses defines critical thinking in the nursing process as “a discipline specific, reflective reasoning process that guides a nurse in generating, implementing, and evaluating approaches for dealing with client care and professional concerns” (Kozier, 2008). This definition is imperative to help a nursing student learn how to think in terms of nursing care. Nursing students must achieve a comprehensive understanding of critical thinking in order to understand the nursing process. The purpose for this paper is for nursing students to learn how to use the nursing process, how to properly document their findings and assessments, and correctly implement APA formatting in a formal paper.

Nursing practice is also one of the key messages addressed in the IOM report. The report suggests that “nurses should practice to full extent of their education and training”. Furthermore, “nurses should be full partners with physicians and other health professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States. This report has a great impact on nursing practice. The IOM report suggests that greater focus on managing the transition from nursing to practice. It recommends that regulatory reforms must be made to allow nurses to expand their scope of practice (IOM report, 2010).

The focus of this paper is based on the importance of the IOM report on the “Future of Nursing” in relation to nursing practice, workforce development and the nursing education. The standard of practice coupled with professional accountability in addition to professional development forms the foundation for the nursing profession as it continues to evolve with the ever-changing needs of those they serve, be it the patient, the public, health care team members, or the nursing profession. Standards of practice are the “what” and describe a competent level of nursing care while Standards of professional performance are the “how” of nursing (Cresaia & Friberg, 2010).

According to the IOM report, the nursing profession is undergoing fundamental changes within the underlying operations of the field. A new regulatory environment coupled with increased scrutiny of the profession will dramatically impact the nursing profession. As the report indicates nurses, in the near future, will have job requirements that are business oriented. Nurses will need to have a better understanding of quality management methods in addition to overall concepts of management. As the health care system continues its rapid reform nurses must also be cognizant of the effects these changes will have on their overall roles and responsibilities. This involves a transformation of the roles and responsibilities of nurses as they enter the profession. As the health care landscape continues to change, so too must the nurses of the future. A dedication to continual learning is therefore needed to help diminish the influence of antiquated and obsolete knowledge regarding the profession.