Nursing Profession : Developing Core Nursing Standard And Different Ethical Principles

Human caring is what sets nursing apart from other professions. As Watson (1998) stated, “care and love are the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of cosmic forces: they comprise the primal universal psychic energy. Caring is the essence of nursing and the most central and unifying focus for nursing practice” (p. 32-33). It is important to establish a good nurse-patient relationship in order to create a healing environment that would meet patient’s needs on all levels including physical, mental/emotional and spiritual, promote recovery, maintain health, and create positive outcomes. Jean Watson emphasized the importance of human

The art of human caring is one of the most essential parts of the nursing profession. Caring is not something that you learn to do, but something that is within you. In nursing, it is important to know what kind of nurse you want to be as well as the care you intend to provide to your patients. The patient is the center of nursing, and it is your responsibility to make sure they are receiving the best care that they can receive. One of the most important things is to be able to set aside personal beliefs and morals in order to provide patient centered care. The way that you approach and care for a patient is either going to make or break the effect of the care you will be implementing to the patient.

Last semester I used this competency a lot and this semester was no different. I was very fortunate to have amazing groups in my last two rotations. During my first rotation this semester, we were able to work as a team and help each other whenever someone needed an extra hand, and if someone was done with their patient’s care earlier, we would go around asking the rest of our group and the nurses if they needed help with something. During my second rotation, because we worked in pairs, I developed an even greater sense of teamwork. By the end of the rotation, we barely needed to communicate verbally, because we both knew what to do in regards to our patient care.

Another important aspect of healthcare is effective interprofessional practice. This allows practitioners from different disciplines to work together to provide the best care for patients. There are four areas of competency in interprofessional collaborative practice. They are values/ethics, roles/responsibilities, interprofessional communication, and teams/teamwork (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2011). Each of these areas contribute to skilled interprofessional

A nurse is given an opportunity to help patients, either if its by helping them through a very serious sickness or just helping a patient get to the bathroom on time, or a time when happiness is overfilling the room and a child is being born. Registered nurses provide a wide variety of patient care services (Mitchell, p.12). A Nurse must always know where to begin and where to stop, as any other career in the health field there is always something that cannot be done by everyone but only the certified person, a nurse must always remain inside her scope of practice to prevent any misunderstandings. A nurse must also follow a code of ethics , the code of ethics of the American Association of Medical Assistants states that a nurse should at all times render service with full respect and dignity of humanity, respect confidential information obtained by a patients file, uphold the honor and high principles the profession and accept its discipline, and last but not least always want to improve her services to better serve the health and well being of the community. (Mitchell, p.65).

Nursing care incorporates not only a compassionate attitude but passion for care of patients. The caring component of nursing cannot be measured, rather dissected through theory within the clarification of what nurses do. Systemically this is all supported through abundant theories and theorist. The nursing profession emphasizes on holistic care which is defined as treatment of the whole person. Within this skill is the admittance of problems that are biomedical but also opportune clarification of the well-being and health of a human that introduces added indicators of disease that are non-visualized (Powers, 2011).

Nursing is not just a collection of tasks. To provide safe and effective care to the clients, nurses must integrate knowledge, skills and attitudes to make sound judgement and decisions. This essay describes some of the essential knowledge, skills and attitudes of nursing and discusses why they are essential attributes of a competent nurse.

Today’s healthcare system requires that healthcare professionals across the globe change their focus towards evidence-based practice to meet the needs of the complex clinical setting and constantly strive to improve patient care and outcomes. The United States Institute of Medicine (IOM) has created five core competencies to be utilized by all health care providers in order to enhance patient outcomes (Inter-professional Education Collaborative Expert Panel, 2011). The competencies are employing evidence-based practice, working in interdisciplinary teams, applying quality improvement, utilizing informatics, and providing patient-centered care (Institute of Medicine, 2010).

There are five core competencies needed for health care professionals and they are provide patient centered care, work in interdisciplinary teams, employ evidence based practice, apply quality improvement, and utilizing informatics. In this paper, I will go into further detail how providing patient centered care is challenging, how to overcome the challenges, how it relates to my chosen profession, and how this competency can impact delivery of care to patients.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends five core competencies that all clinicians should possess in order to satisfy the needs of the 21st century health system. The report says that doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health professionals are not being adequately prepared to provide the highest quality and safest medical care possible, and there is insufficient assessment of their ongoing proficiency. Educators and accreditation, as well as licensing and certification organizations should ensure that students and working professionals develop and maintain proficiency in these five core areas (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2014):

Teamwork in nursing is a little different that the teamwork of an actual team. In nursing, there is an ‘I’ in team, except here the ‘I’ stands for independent (QSEN Institute, 2015). Nurses and hospital faculty work their independent jobs, but communicate in order to give the patient the best care possible. Once again as stated before by Berman, the QSEN Institute believes that knowing your team 's strengths and weaknesses will also help you to be able to provide the best care possible.

In the nursing industry there are different principles and philosophies that we live by. These philosophies and principles can range from Jean Watson’s Caring Theory of Human Caring/Caring Science (Watson's Caring Science Institute , 2010) to the Standards of Practice for Registered Nursing (AHPRA, 2018) We as inspiring nurses need to have a level of caring that allows us to connect with the patients and give them the best medical advice. Combine that with the science behind how the body works and what is needed we can accomplish our full potential. Every nurse has their own views on what makes them a want to be a nurse and what caring means to them as well as their own philosophy.

It is also on point with three of the Institute of Medicine core competencies for health care professionals including: 1) being able to deliver patient-centered care; 2) working as part of an interdisciplinary team; 3) and employing evidence-based practice (Institute of Medicine, 2003).

Nursing involves greater purpose beside the objective of treating patients’ ailments in an efficient and effective manner. Nurses, physicians, and health care providers across the board uphold the duty to treat patients with the utmost value of care. As a universal definition of care does not exist, Anita Finkelman and Carole Kenner explain care is drawn from four perspectives: a sense of care involving compassion, knowledge and expertise that allows nurses to advocate for the patient in addition to treating the medial complication, and “…competence in carrying out all the required procedures, personal and technical, with true concern for providing the proper care at the proper time in the proper way (Finkelman & Kenner, 2013) . Combining the foundation of every perspective leads to the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) first core competency of patient-centered care. Sans the image of patient-centered care the practice of nursing and medicine alike will lack the passion the American Nursing Association envisions for “the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and care of individuals, families, communities, and populations” (Finkelman & Kenner, 2013). Therefore, the author of this paper explores the IOM’s definition of patient-centered care, implementation of the concept, and its pivotal relationship to the nursing profession.

The IOM Core Competencies for this course were for the student to be able to obtain knowledge regarding patient-centered care, work in interdisciplinary teams, evidence-based practice, quality improvement and informatics. Only the first two of these competencies were addressed specifically in this course.