Is nursing defined as a profession, practice or simply as work?

The short answer is that there is no fully agreed upon definition of nursing. You could probably argue many different angles. Depending on your instructor, you might do well to support his/her view of it as opposed to taking a more challenging stance.

It's my understanding that the idea of nursing as a profession is what most nursing academics support. Of course, that depends on one's definition of "profession." Often, it seems that nursing is trying to frame itself as equal to, different from, and complementary to medicine. I rarely see arguments for nursing as a profession by comparing nurses to plumbers or hair dressers, though they are also considered professionals under many definitions of the term.

Having a specialized knowledge base is part of many definitions of profession and it seems like that was a major impetus for the development of formalized nursing diagnoses.

Of course, there's no denying that nursing is a practice, especially acute care nursing. There is the application of technical, manual skills and the utilization of previous experiential knowledge. Mathematics, on the other hand, can be purely theoretical (I've heard that anyway). Nursing as a field doesn't exist without patients who need nursing care.

Nursing as work? Seems kinda like a no-brainer - uh, yeah, isn't providing services for money "work" no matter what the service? Nursing does include basic care such as ambulating and feeding. Doing these tasks, I suppose, could be considered *just* work once the patient has been assessed as stable and that's why nurses are able to delegate these tasks to unlicensed personnel.

I personally find this kind of discussion interesting, although consensus is almost never reached.

Keep it simple, nursing is a profession. Just like the medical profession, which encompases a vast array of specialties. The nursing profession encompases also a vast array of specialties that we draw from. We practice as nurses in our profession. We work as nurses in our profession... We base what we know and learn through the sciences of our profession... We incorporate and practice good ethics within our profession... We learn about the psychology of relationships and use them in our profession... I guess one could say I'm in favor of the word profession in describing who and what we are.

I would agree with profession. I don't understand the question "is nursing a practice or a profession." I think you practice a profession. (Doctors practice medicine, lawyers practice law, etc)

In my BSN program we were taught and the textbooks stated that nursing is a profession. I would find that statement a lot easier to defend if the reality I have seen every day of my working life since school supported this.

Nursing is a profession, end of discussion.


Rn Larry

It's mostly just semantics in my book. You know that you're in a BSN program if you have papers to do with questions like that.

While semantics do have a role to play in improving the image of nursing, I don't see that it's crucial to have nursing students frame arguments about whether or not nursing is a profession - which of course depends upon one's definition of profession, which is also debatable. (Though as a student nurse, you'd better argue that it IS a profession or your instructor will balk.) This is more of a sociologic question than one that individual practicing nurses need concern themselves with. In fact, by asking the question, the implication is that many people DON'T consider nursing a profession... but to the average person, who cares?! Do electricians wax poetic about how "professional" they are? Do hairdressers need to define why they're are professionals before being allowed to open their own beauty shop?

On the other hand, nurses DO need to know their legal responsibilities and limitations, their legitimate practice options, what kind of liability they need to be concerned about, etc in addition to knowing nursing skills. THOSE are the types of issues that should be covered in "Professional Nursing Practice" - not asking each student to frame their own argument of why nursing is a profession (under the guise of ASKING the question IF nursing is a profession... how round-a-bout is that?!).

Semantics is very important - it separates the educated from the trained. Precise communication forces us to think about the issue and prepare a reasonable argument. A lot of us have jobs where we don't have to think about the bigger picture, but some nurses have to create the fields for change and those people must be articulate and represent our "profession" as one inhabited by "reasonable" people. Fortunately I get to be a prole but let's face it, the most articulate people get to work in the better trenches.

I believe that we are fighting for the right to be called a profession, although we lack the respect and monetary rewards that should go with that. Plumbers make as much or more.....