There are nine essentials of professional nursing practice that will ensure the professional nurse will be able to practice in complex healthcare systems. The nine essentials are liberal education, basic organizational and systems leadership for quality care and patient safety, scholarship for evidence based practice, information management, health care policy, interprofessional communication and collaboration, clinical prevention, professionalism and baccalaureate generalist nursing practice. These aspects of the baccalaureate education are “essential” for creating a well-rounded nurse able to practice in a variety of settings and provide care for people from “all walks of life.”
As I prepare for my first classes in nursing school, I recognize my unique position to examine the values that I will bring into my nursing career. Without any experience, my values remain relatively unshaped regarding healthcare. In contrast, the values of nurses who have already accumulated a variety of experiences tend to be more nuanced and informed. For this exercise, I met with one of these experienced nurses—CC, a cardiac-catheterization laboratory nurse who just welcomed her third child. Together, CC and I explored the differences in our upbringings, how we were each sucked into nursing, and how our values have changed throughout different life experiences. Above all, I intended to delve into the story of her fifteen-year career in order to discover how an experienced nurse philosophizes patient care.
There are many different roles and values within the profession of nursing. Each of these roles and values has a different job description and purpose, yet they all contain one common link. The link that connects the different roles in the nursing profession is the fact that they each rely on nursing research, theories, and evidence based practice to provide safe, quality care to patients. Without nursing research, theories, and evidence based practice, nursing care would be based on trial and error methods that often cause more harm than good to the patient.
This essay will consider ethics in nursing, discuss values and morals and how dignity and respect in patient care is influenced; considering the importance of reflection and the implications it has on effective practice from the perspective of a student nurse. The scenario “Call Me Joe” provided by Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) (2010a) highlights concerning issues and bad practice that are happening in modern day nursing practice, and using the Driscoll and Teh (2001) reflective model: What, Now What and So What, to consider the care that Joe is receiving; considering how the nursing practice affects him directly and the implications of the nature of knowledge in nursing practice. Part of the way in which nursing practice is
As a registered nurse practicing in the state of California I am responsible for practicing within my states legal regulations and nursing scope of practice. My concern for the welfare of the sick and injured allows me to practice ethical provisions of nursing. These are required if I am to carry out competent and effective nursing care. Nursing encompasses the prevention of illness, the alleviation of suffering, and the protection, promotion, and restoration of health in the care of individuals. Therefore, as health care professionals we must be familiar with the different philosophical forces, ethical principles, theories and values that influence nursing. At the same time, we must be respectful to our patient’s
Sawbridge and Hewison (2015) believe that compassion is important to the delivery of patient care. However, professionals are working in environments that are increasingly targeted which can take the professionals away from delivering compassionate care (Baverstock and Finley 2016). This assignment aims to discuss how important and how realistic it is for health and social care leaders to balance compassion with effective and efficient service delivery. It aims to do this by exploring what is meant by the term compassion and the influence that it has on patient care. The author will then move on to discuss the impact compassion has on service delivery, considering if professionals need to balance compassion with effective and efficient care delivery including the if compassion is in fact required to deliver effective care.
Respect is vital to any relationship because it provides a base for fair and unbiased treatment of one another. Without respect for the worth of each individual and his expertise it would be difficult to act as a team. Just as critical to the function of a team is integrity. Integrity ensures that the nurse is acting honestly and holds herself to both moral and professional standards. Responsibility is essential in all nursing practice, but is particularly necessary when integrating care with other disciplines and professionals. As the functions of a healthcare team become more individually specific, the ability rely on each person to perform her part is crucial. Finally, compassion is the framework for all nursing action. While it is widely accepted that compassion for patients is part of nursing, compassion for fellow professionals is necessary too. In conjunction with respect, compassion allows the team to function by accepting each individual’s specific perspective and acknowledging the importance of their skills.
Professional values are the foundation for practice; they guide interactions with client, colleagues, other professionals, and the public, by providing the framework for commitment to the Welfare of others. They are also belief or ideas to which an individual is committed and which are reflected in patterns of behavior. Institute of medicine (2000). In this article, I will define Altruism, Autonomy, Human Dignity, Integrity, and Social Justice. I will also identify how these values are demonstrated in our every day lives by other nurses and myself. According to Dougherty (1992) “Altruism is a concern
Everyone’s values and beliefs about the profession of nursing are all different. The four concepts of nursing are interrelated and all mean something different to every person, too. Throughout this paper, I will be reflecting on my values and beliefs about nursing through the four concepts while comparing them to a nursing theorist with views that are most similar to my own.
Compassion and respect are essential attitudes for nursing practice. Compassion has been described as the “wounding of the heart” or a
When it comes to a nursing philosophy, every nurse has their own values, beliefs, and ideals that are different and unique from others. It presents a great challenge when incorporating these ideas into a professional practice. “Professional values are standards for actions accepted by the practitioner and professional group that provide a framework influencing the behavior of the group.” (“Professional Values: The Case for RN-BSN Completion Education,” 2008, p.1). Identifying which values are most important will have a huge
This scenario presents various ethical issues that could be argued several ways from HIPPA violations to whether or not this patient has/had the cognitive ability to understand the execution of an advanced directive and Power of Attorney. Advance Directives are put in place for this very reason. It eliminates the need for family members to make a choice in the heat of the moment and also respects the wishes of the person whom it affects directly. Although Mr. E’s hypoxia could affect his ability to think clearly one cannot assume that he has an altered level of consciousness nor the inability to execute an advance
Professional values guide the decisions and actions we make in our careers. As nurses we are responsible for caring for patients during birth, death, illness and healing. If we are not aware of the decisions and actions to take it would be impossible to provide our patients with exceptional care. The values that are the foundation of the nursing profession are altruism, autonomy, human dignity, and social justice. In this paper I will define each value and describe their impact on nurses and nursing students.
In life it is hard to know if the career chosen is the perfect fit. How does one know if he or she is going towards the right profession? Once I learned more about nursing and became a CNA I knew nursing was a good fit for myself. In this paper I will first, explain what brought me to the nursing profession then, the values of nursing and how they relate to my personal values and lastly, my personal goals and how they relate to nursing.
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.