Problems Associated With Nursing Education

I define my philosophy of nursing within the three nursing domains of person, health, and environment. My goal is to communicate the importance of nursing as a knowledge-based career, depending not only on the nurse fulfilling her role but also on the patient’s compliance. A patient must learn to provide self-care at home in the same capacity as the nurse would provide care in the clinical setting. I discuss various subjects within nursing. I explain why I want to be a nurse, what I believe a nurse’s role is, the different domains of nursing, and where I believe nursing will be in the future. My philosophy demonstrates the interdependence of the nursing domains. You cannot fully evaluate a person without evaluating their health,

The rising rates of seasoned nurses have resulted in replacing the more experienced and skilled professionals by infusing fresh graduates who lack the required skill and experience needed to effectively adapt to a clinical environment. This is coupled by the booming level of workload witnessed by these graduates who many are unable to cope with. Adding fuel to fire the initial work experience is discouraging for many graduates who hence are exhausted .This results in numerous fresh graduates completely burning out in just 18 months of their introduction to professional medical environment (World Health Organization, 2006).

Transitioning from nursing school to working in a hospital setting can be a challenging time for a new graduate. Due to the nursing shortage, new graduate nurses are being hired with little to no experience. This is overwhelming for new nurses, especially when they are not getting adequate support or training from the hospital. The amount of stress, pressure, and lack of training is leading to a high turnover rate for new graduate nurses. With patient acuity on the rise, new graduate nurses that are filling these vacancies in the hospitals, need to be competent nurses to provide proper and safe care to the patients.

The first pattern of knowing in nursing presented is the Empirics: the science of nursing. Carper (1978) described this empirical knowing as factual evidence and proven medical research or documentation used for patient treatment. This empirical knowledge is vastly related explanations and predictions from facts and things that have been proven. This author believes that most of this scientific evidence or knowledge stems from books and clinical experiences gained in healthcare facilities under the leadership of trained educators or licensed medical providers. This author believes this because as a nursing student, she will learn nursing techniques such as inserting foley catheters, and doing injections first by observing the nursing

In the article “What Do Nurses Really Do?”, Suzanne Gordon explores what nurses truly do. She concludes that nurses “save lives, prevent complications, prevent suffering, and save money” (Gordon 2006). Nurses provide care for their patients in the physical and emotional sense. Emotionally caring for a patient and being sensitive to his or her needs result from interacting with patients while performing the skills and using the knowledge that nurses learned in school. Nurses grow in their skills, knowledge, and attitudes through practice. Quality and safety education for nursing incorporates competencies that all nurses must use in their practice. These nursing competencies include evidence-based nursing practice, quality improvement, safety, teamwork and collaboration, patient-centered care, and informatics.

With an ever-increasing body of knowledge in the field of nursing, more education is being required to enter the field of nursing. Many healthcare institutions are raising the educational requirements in order to become employed or maintain employment in their facilities. Healthcare organizations are transitioning to hiring registered nurses (RN) who have a higher level of education, such as, a graduate from a Baccalaureate Degree Nursing (BSN) program. The goal of these institutions is to have nurses with a broader array of skills that can meet the growing demands of our patient population. BSN prepared nurses are recognized for their well-rounded skills in critical thinking, management, case management and health promotion versus Associate Degree nurses (ADN)/Diploma nurses that focus on direct patient care.

A1. The nursing profession has evolved significantly over the decades. One of the factors that have greatly influenced these changes has been the involvement of nurses in the development of theories and data base needed to support the advancement of our profession. In the last half of the twentieth century, nurse researchers (1950s) and nurse theorists (1960s and 1970s) greatly contributed to the expanding body of nursing knowledge with their studies of nursing practice and the development of nursing models and theories (American Nurses Association, 2010, p. 16). Like in any other research activity, a special set of

The beginning of a new graduate nurses career rarely begins easily, there seems to be a distinct disconnect between the fantasy of what it means to be a nurse and the reality of bedside nursing. Nursing school seems to feed into this disconnection, in that it does not prepare the new graduate registered nurse (NGRN) for their professional practice. What nursing school does is give the NGRN the basics, a peak into what is to come. The NGRN has to find out for themselves what the true meaning of being a nurse is and if it fits their preconceived ideas.

My practicum setting will be an associate degree nursing program, Joliet Junior College (JJC), one of the oldest community colleges in Illinois. The mission of the school is focused on offering students an affordable, accessible valued education for a lifelong profession in nursing, and to serve the community (Joliet Junior College [JJC], n. d.). Accordingly, the school’s philosophy is based on preparing students to be exceptional providers in the growing healthcare system, providing safe and high quality care (JJC, n. d.). The foundation of the JJC nursing program is based on four major principles: client, environment, health and nursing (JJC, n.d), while their conceptual framework is grounded in the fundamental structure of three major theories which forms the basis of the concepts, skills, and principles of the nursing practice (JJC, n. d.). The three major theories are: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Levels of Prevention and the Nursing Process (JJC, n.d.). Joliet Junior College nursing school offers a competitive program and combines the traditional classroom experiences, in-class high-fidelity simulations labs, online augmentation theory lectures, and clinical experiences in health facilities throughout the community (Joliet Junior College [JJC], 2016).

Nursing was, for my sixteen year old self, taking care of the sick. Little did I know the complexities of that definition. Still, taking care of the sick was interesting enough to make nursing my major. I started practicing nursing years ago. However, I still struggle defining and explaining my profession to others. I usually start by differentiating nursing from medicine. Nurses see patients as humans rather than a disease that needs treatment (Zaccagnini & White, 2014, p. 15). However, as I advance my career, I must actively incorporate nursing theory into my practice. Nursing theory gives a foundation to understand patients and their health problems better. The use of nursing theory provides a framework to evaluate nurses’ interventions on a higher standard (Zaccagnini & White, 2014). Kenney described five steps to follow once the decision to include nursing theory has being made. This paper will explore the process of applying the Kenney’s five steps into my practice.

Nursing education has progressed throughout history from one of uneducated lay persons to the current standards we know today. As the career has progressed it has become apparent that there is a need for a skilled labor forced trained to deal with the sick and dying, “the provision of nursing care by American women…demonstrated the effectiveness of skilled nursing on improving outcomes for sick and injured soldiers” (Creasia & Friberg, 2011, p. 4). However, as the career progresses so does the need for more specialized training amongst nurses to help them deal with the changing atmosphere of patient care. The future

American Nurses Association defines nursing as “the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, communities, and population”( Potter,P.,& Perry, A. 2005,1-5). Thus making nursing dynamic and ever changing. However, when nursing

Many people believe mandatory residency programs for newly licensed nurses are long overdue. The knowledge needed to practice nursing has grown to include health policy, ethics, public health, research, healthcare delivery improvements, as well as leadership skills. Nurses are part of the multi-disciplinary team and must work together with healthcare providers who possess masters or doctoral degrees. Nursing school prepares nurses with the basic information they need to know in order to practice safe nursing. However, modern nurses are faced with ever increasing demands. New nurses must know how to collaborate with the healthcare team, manage their priorities, stay organized and recognize life-threatening situations. Many new grads are overwhelmed with the demands of nursing, which can lead to compromised patient care and safety. Formalized, supervised guidance will improve patient care and retain nurses. The study also recommended doubling the amount of nurses with a masters or doctoral degree by 2020 in order to provide an adequate supply of nurses who are able to assume nurse faculty, primary care providers, and researcher positions.

With a consistent change in modernizing medicine, along with the continuing advancement in technology, continuing education in nursing is essential for a variety of reasons. The nurse’s main concern is providing safe, efficient, and effective patient care with positive patient outcomes. This paper will examine the differences in competencies between nurses prepared at an associate-degree level versus a baccalaureate-degree level, in order to provide an evidenced-based understanding of the variation in the educational preparation of nurses.

In today’s world, it is essential to incorporate nursing theory into practice. Patricia Benner, through her work, “has provided essential understanding of how knowledge and skills are acquired and directly applied to nursing practice, education, research and administration” (Altmann, 2007, p. 114). According to Benner’s model of skill acquisition, “the nurse passes through five stages of career development, novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient and expert” (English, 1993, p.387). Specific patterns of behavior, thinking, and performance is present in each stage. The most experience is associated with the expert nurse and the least experience is possessed by the novice nurse (Benjamin, 2007). This model is based on ascending level of proficiency and the key concepts of this model are: competence, skill attainment, experience, clinical knowledge and practical knowledge