The Definition of Nursing
To my mind, nursing is a profession that holds hospitals and clinics together. A nurse is a person that educates and cares for patients, administers medication and manages the process of treatment, provides psychological help, and assists physicians and surgeons. The nurse profession exists because there is a constant flow of patients with minor problems that do not require exquisite knowledge to handle. Therefore, a hospital employs a few surgeons and an army of nurses. I practice nursing because I like being in the field helping people.
Assumptions about Nurses, Patients, Healthcare Providers, and Communities
I believe that a nurse is in the face of a clinic. Patients often evaluate the hospital’s performance based on how they were treated by nurses because they are in constant contact with them. When patients are concerned, they are all just people who need help. However, there are different kinds of patients, some being easier or harder to work with. Elder patients, for example, are considered difficult to attend to. The latter, perhaps, can be evidenced by the recent study discovering that medical staff often underprioritizes the elderly (Skirbekk & Nortvedt, 2014).
There are dozens of professions in the sphere of health care: general practitioners, surgeons, psychologists, dentists, and so on. All of them specialize in a particular sphere that requires lots of expert knowledge. It seems to me that it is harder to become such a professional, but it is easier to work as one in terms of stress management. If a medical community is concerned, it is rather heartwarming to think of all of the doctors and specialists who treat people as colleagues. To my mind, it develops a sense of belonging and a healthy pride for the occupation.
The Major Domains of Nursing
The nurse operates primarily in the field of interpersonal relationships. Here he or she has several groups of people to interact with, such as patients, their relatives, and doctors. In the first case, a nurse holds a great deal of personal responsibility for the health of a patient. For example, he or she has to administer appropriate drugs in the right dosages. When the relatives are concerned, being a good psychologist could never hurt as you could relieve people’s stress. A nurse’s relationship with doctors may influence the performance of the whole clinical unit. For instance, creating a professional working environment by identifying where your help may be needed or when you require assistance could be crucial in emergency cases. Van Bogaert, Kowalski, Weeks, and Clarke (2013) also believe that nurses may play a critical role in clinical decision making ensuring the best treatment outcomes for patients.
Summary and Future Implications
All things considered, the main perk that connects all domains and allows a nurse to be successful at his or her job is the ability to communicate successfully. Be it a patient, his or her mother, or a surgeon, a professional nurse should always choose the best method to convey his or her ideas to provide high-quality care and preserve the good-natured relationship with colleagues. In my view, this is the ground for improvement in the sphere, and future nurses should be more focused on being good psychologists, as their work will still require conversing with people. It is also possible that in future the profession will not be necessary as most of the procedures would be done automatically and the updates on a patients’ condition would come straight to the practitioner’s digital device with statistics and possible ways of further treatment.
As for my path in nursing, the greatest difficulty is stress management. As I become more experienced this issue will likely be addressed by itself. As for the goal for professional development, I consider working towards being a better psychologist for the reasons I enumerated above.
References
Skirbekk, H., & Nortvedt, P. (2014). Inadequate treatment for elderly patients: Professional norms and tight budgets could cause “ageism” in hospitals. Health Care Analysis, 22(2), 192-201.
Van Bogaert, P., Kowalski, C., Weeks, S. M., & Clarke, S. P. (2013). The relationship between nurse practice environment, nurse work characteristics, burnout and job outcome and quality of nursing care: A cross-sectional survey. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 50(12), 1667-1677.