On admitting a patient, a nurse takes responsibility of the patient, acts as the middle man between the doctor and the patient in the capacity of both a care taker and a support system for the patient. These responsibilities ensure that nurses end up spending more time with patients during hospitalization.
Nursing is a true calling for it requires not only for a nurse to be certificated but also to have the emotional fortitude needed to be a source of strength and solace to hospitalized patients. Therefore, prospective nurses must cultivate a number of skills to achieve those goals. Compassion is one of them: caring for the terminally ill or the elderly is a full time job which can be very challenging. Nurses are given the responsibility of looking after patients who are not family, and without compassion the task is unachievable. A professional nurse is one who understands patient’s discomfort and employs his or her expertise to alleviate it.
Another skill is selflessness. It is the ability to understand another individual’s pain and challenges he/she may come across. For example, taking care of patients in hospices is very demanding. In these situations, looking after the physical and emotional well-being of a patient requires selflessness. Moreover, a nurse must possess great interpersonal skills. His/her duties include informing loved ones of terminally ill patients on the condition of their health. In some cases, the need to counsel both parties on the possibility of death may be unavoidable. Here nurse’s interpersonal skills and the ability to communicate compassionately are real assets.
The nurse also must love his/her job: nursing is a profession that requires it’s adherents to invest both time and heart when carrying out tasks. Nurses are responsible for the human life kept in their care which makes it obligatory to focus entirely on a patient’s well-being while ignoring external distractions. Sometimes, these distractions could even be personal issues, and true love for the profession is the only way to stay focused on the job at hand. Diligence is a very important factor as well: the statistic covering US physicians shows that while doctors spend approximately 10 to 20 minutes with each patient, nurses spend an average of an hour. This sample project confirmed the fact that nurses spend more time handling patients and must be diligent enough to avoid medication errors.
Nursing is an admirable profession and like in most professional fields, older and more experienced nurses are valued more and are given the additional responsibility of serving as good examples to the younger generation on the need to cultivate compassion, selflessness and interpersonal skills.
References
- Hanan, M & Awatef, H. (2015). Correlation between Patients’ Satisfaction and Nurses’ Caring Behaviors Vox 5, 31-32.
- Berman, S. (2008). Kozier & Erb Fundamentals of Nursing Concepts, Processes and Practice. 13-15.
- Allen, D. and Lyne, P. (2006). The reality of nursing research. London: Routledge.
- Black, B. and Chitty, K. (2014). Professional nursing. St. Louis, Mo.: Elsevier.
- Caldwell, K., Henshaw, L. and Taylor, G. (2005). Developing a framework for critiquing health research. Journal of Health, Social and Environmental Issues, 6(1), p.50.
- De Chesnay, M. (2015). Nursing Research Using Data Analysis. New York: Springer Publishing Company, p.177.
- Ellis, P. (2010). Evidence-based practice in nursing. Exeter, England: Learning Matters.