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.