The profession of a nurse is one of the most demanding among all other types of work settings. The nurse is responsible for providing quality patient care in hospitals, nursing homes, and ambulatory care sites. The first object of nurses is to provide a high quality of care for patients and, thus, a nurse should always ask himself/herself “what would be best for the patient?”
Nowadays, the work of a nurse is influenced by many factors, especially the rapid development of new technologies. The significant progress in biomedical science gave an opportunity to increase the preventive level of some diseases. According to this fact, hospitals and healthcare clinics require well-educated nurses who have experience of working with biometrical technique.
Another challenge is the globalization that led to the diversity of the population on a demographical level. First of all, it concerns the cultural and language aspects. Hence, besides the medical skills and high level of qualification, nurses should have at least basic knowledge about different cultures that prevail in their region. The knowledge of languages, which are widespread in a particular region, is also required.
According to this fact, the nursing profession becomes a challengeable work, which requires using various skills in order to provide quality health care. The task of this work is to analyze the nursing profession from different points of view and to present the changes that are necessary to take today in order to make nurse performance more effective.
Articles Review
In order to shed light on the specifics of the nursing profession and the skills are necessary today to become a qualified healthcare worker, three different articles were used. The first article is titled “Hallmarks of the Professional Nursing Practice Environment”, which was taken from aacn.nche.edu. In this article, the author introduces the current state of the nursing profession and the changes that occurred during the last decades. The primary object of his work is to present the current environment for nurses’ practice and the factors that lead to its improvement or decline. Among them, one can outline such aspects as increasing demand, slow growth in supply, and aging of the nurse workforce.
The author states that these factors require an immediate change in order to make the performance of a nurse better. Thus, at the end of the article, one may take into consideration some recommendations that are targeted on nurse practice improvement. The main steps towards improvement include such recommendations as manifest a philosophy of clinical care emphasizing quality, safety and interdisciplinary collaboration; recognize contributions of nurses’ knowledge and expertise to clinical care quality and patient outcomes; support executive stage of nursing leadership; allow nurses’ partaking in organization of clinical care systems and clinical decision-making; preserve clinical development programs that are based on certification, education, and advanced preparation; display professional growth support for nurses; operate technological progresses in information systems and clinical care.
The second article is titled “The Nursing Profession Today” and was taken from Jacksonville University School of Nursing. In this article, one tries to describe the benefits of being a nurse and what a person faces when he/she chooses this profession. The author pays much attention to the educational aspect of being a nurse. One can find here useful information about education, training, and certification for nursing careers. Moreover, the author introduces information about nurses’ processes and theories. In general, the presented information in this article is targeted to attract the attention of the potential future nurses and present the profession of a nurse as an amazing and interesting work.
The third article is titled “Transformation of Americans Health Care System: Implications for Professional Direct-Care Nurses”, written by Lynn Dykema Sprayberry. In this article, the author presents information about the historical transformation of nurse career since its beginning till present days. The author raises such issues as politics of health care quality and accessibility, health care reform and direct-care nurses and the challenges of direct-care nurses.
Article Analysis
The introduced articles raise the issue of the nursing profession, but all they present information concerning one specific aspect. For instance, the first article presents information about the profession of a nurse, the second one tells about advantages of being a nurse, and the third one introduces materials about the development of the nursing profession. According to this fact, one may state that the first and second articles raise almost the same issues. However, the author of the second article describes the nursing profession only from the positive side, while the author of the first article gives facts that illustrate the nursing profession both from positive and negative aspects. Hence, it can be said that the materials of the first article are more credible and present the full picture of the nursing profession.
Moreover, it should be mentioned that in the first article the author tries to solve the problem that nurses face today. He states that the current position of a nurse is quite challengeable because today they have to perform many various tasks that require multi-skills ability. Hence, it means that a good nurse today is a person who is able to adapt to any conditions of work and can communicate with patients on their native language and also has at least the basic knowledge about their culture. The author of the first article outlines eight major problems that, according to his/her opinion, are necessary to be solved in order to improve the performance of health care workers. Each of these problems also has possible solutions, which were presented in this article.
The third article differs from the previous two because it provides information about the development of the nursing profession during the last decades. The author tries to introduce the changes that took place in the nursing profession and what were the reasons for these changes. Moreover, the author also provides materials about the current problems of the health care system. This article is meant to raise questions about the future of direct-care nursing and professional priorities. A great deal is considered about health care transformation unfolds. The proposed choices and priorities could have far-reaching consequences for the future of nursing and health care.
After reading these articles, I came to the conclusion that the profession of a nurse is quite complex and skill-demand work. Each article gave some piece of information that gave an opportunity to view the nursing profession from different angles. For instance, from the first article, I learned about the Professional Nursing Practice Environment. The information from this article helped me to understand that the nursing profession is moved to a new level; besides, I got to know that today this profession requires significant changes. The nurses’ obligations are not only providing quality health care but also the performing of various additional functions. However, not many nurses today are ready to cope with the aroused demands and thus, the healthcare system requires the immediate reforming programs. At the end of this article, the author also mentions the nurse practice, but he gives only superficial information about this issue. Fortunately, the second article is dedicated primarily to this aspect of nurse work and thus, I could continue my studying of this issue.
As it was mentioned above, the second article was dedicated to the current position of the nursing profession. First of all, I should notice that this article did not give a full picture of the nurse career. The author presents only the positive aspects of work and the information does not contain any disadvantages of the nursing profession. However, I should admit that the article contains useful information for those people who are going to become a nurse. The whole structure of the article is formed in such manner that a person, who has no deep knowledge of this profession, could receive the basic information about it. Moreover, the author provides the types of nurses’ qualification and education, which is required in order to work as a nurse, and which trainings one should pass to receive a license of working in a hospital as a nurse.
I should admit that the third article gives a full answer to the background of the nursing profession. Due to this article, I learned much about the development of the nursing profession and which process had an impact on it. The article also provides the reforms that were taken in order to improve the performance of nurses. In order to see the entire picture of how the nursing profession was changing, the author introduces the challenges of this profession and how the authorities coped with them in the past. Hence, I received an opportunity to compare the methods of improvement of the nursing profession that was used in the past with those ones used today. My conclusion is that today the mechanism of work improvement experiences significant changes, and it is more oriented on the patient demands. Hence, a nurse today should be a psychologist, a therapist and a person who can help in a difficult minute.
The articles that were chosen for the analysis illustrate the various aspects of the nursing profession. Each of them can give useful information concerning the background of nurse work, education, training, reforms or improvement. I should mention that the introduced analysis and information that I learned with the help of these articles caused a significant impact both on my professional and personal vision of the nursing profession. First of all, I want to say about my personal values. I always believed that the nursing profession is the easiest and non-skill demand profession. In other words, a person should pass some special courses in order to work as a nurse. However, now I can say that the nursing profession requires not only professional skills but also some personal qualities. Thus, not every person can be a successful nurse even if he/she was a student during his/her education.
Thus, I came to the conclusion that a nursing profession suits only those people who are ready to help others not because it is predetermined by their job obligations but due to their desire. Sometimes patients need that somebody could listen to what troubles them; therefore, a good nurse is such a person who can understand a patient in such a moment and give necessary moral support.
My professional values also experienced some changes; first of all, it concerns the profession of a nurse in general. Now, I realize that nurses, as well as other health care workers, make a significant contribution to the process of treatment and make the presence of patients more comfortable. The role of a nurse in the hospital is hard to overestimate because they are those staff members who spend the biggest part of their time with patients, trying to help them and make their presence in hospitals more comfortable.
