HELP!!!! Asking for help!

ZASHAGALKA, RN · Jun 2, 2006

One of your fellow students asked almost identical questions. See if these answers can fit into your questions:

What is your responsibility as a professional nurse?

I have a responsibility to be a good example and resource to my peers. I attend conferences and constantly work at being an up-to-date and excellent clinical resource. I also try to model professional behavior. I am on my unit’s professional practice committee in order to improve and streamline our practice. This includes things such as developing protocols and revamping policies and procedures.

I belong to my professional organization, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN). I attend its national conference.

I make it a point to ‘network’ in places such as here, allnurses.com in order to advance my concept of my profession to and with a greater alliance of peers.

My responsibility to my profession is to improve my profession as a result of my membership within it.

How does the code of ethics impact on professional nursing practice?

Most professions are driven by a set of ethics, a guideline for ‘right’ conduct within that profession. While nursing is no different, the stakes (life and death) are much higher and the concept of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, well that is much less concrete.

So, there are two issues normally in play with bedside ethics in nursing: what’s at stake in the outcome and what values are to be respected. Ethics is normally summed up by many nurses in the following concept: how would I want MY loved one treated in a similar circumstance? But, that doesn’t go far enough. Ethics require viewing the concept of best treatment through the lens of the values that would define that ‘best treatment’ for that individual.

I consider my primary job in nursing to be one of patient advocacy. To me, patient advocacy is being the ethical voice for my patient within the healthcare team that ensures that his/her ‘stake’ AND values within the process of the provision of healthcare are protected and maximized.

Because I consider this vision of patient advocacy to be a PRIMARY definition of my job, I would have to say that my ‘ethics’ impact my professional practice in a primary way. It is the Constitution upon which my practice is based.

What does professionalism mean to you?

I have heard many definitions of ‘professionalism’. Many advocate that issues such as minimum entry to practice define professionalism. In addition, we have tried to define nursing with various tools such as care plans, nursing diagnosis and ‘nursing theory’.

None of these things do an adequate job of defining nursing as a profession.

Professionalism to me is the act of being a patient advocate COMBINED with being a high tech and extensively trained bedside monitor, interventioner, and fellow human being.

Professionalism also means to me that nurses, as a group, bring a voice to the table in the legislative and administrative processes that define our jobs. Nurses have not always been self-effective in this quest. In the past, some of the very tools above have disenfranchised nurses from the very organizational strength that could promote professionalism. So, in the name of ‘professionalism’, nurses have often acted in ways that divide out strengths, thereby decreasing our ability to be represented as professionals.

How would you practice as a professional in nursing?

By being a patient advocate, by being a high-tech monitor, inteventioner, and human touch at the bedside, by keeping up on my clinical expertise, by being a model for my peers, by participating in my professional organizations, by advocating for legislative and administrative policy that enhances nursing, and by networking with my professional peers.

How does the law impact on your professional nursing practice?

The law is EVERYTHING to my professional practice. In the states, every state has a NURSE PRACTICE ACT, a law that defines nursing. Even the ability to call myself a nurse is a function of law. But it goes beyond just law, as many practices of nursing are governed by regulatory agencies, such as Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospital Organizations (JCAHO). Finally, local hospital policy is developed to acknowledge and expand law and regulation to define local practice.

Nursing functions within this entire body of law, regulation, and policy. Being a professional nurse involves stepping up to the plate and claiming a place at the table where these laws, regulations, and policies are made and updated.

Tell me about your education preparation?

I have an Associate’s Degree in nursing, a Bach degree in Biology, and I’m certified by my professional organization (CCRN).

~faith,

Timothy, RN, BA, CCRN

Texas, USA.

suebird3 · Jun 2, 2006

Welcome to allnurses.com! I moved your post to a more appropriate Forum. Good luck!

Suebird

Michelle369 · Jun 2, 2006

thanks for your help!

yes, she is my classmate!

Unfortunately, we can't interview a same person!

Michelle369 · Jun 2, 2006

I still need for help!

could someone can answer my question?

thanks a lot!

sanctuary, BSN, MSN, RN · Jun 2, 2006

Michelle, thank you for the chance to look at my life from the outside, so to speak.

1.Being a professional means that there are specific standards of education and practice that allow us to maintain a standard of practice that encourages safety for our patients. It holds us to a degree of scientific knowledge, and expects that to be blended with a human to human, hands-on caretaking. We are asked to be knowledgeable not only about the causes and effects of illnesses, but the civil and legal rights of our patients. Being a professional means not only that I am educated to do my job, but that I attempt to adhere to the highest standards at all times. I must be a hope holder and a spiritual comfort while performing uncomfortable and embarassing actions upon another's body. A "professional" does it skillfully, gently, and compassionately.

2. Nurses are first accountable to the licensing agency of out local goverment. In the US, each state has a Board of Nursing that describes the expectations and limitations of our profession. They are taxed with the role of insuring the sqfety of the public. They insure that people meet certain personal and educational level prior to licensing, and that those standards are maintained. We are also held to and limited by the Policy and Proceedures of the institution that we work for. Those P&P may have greater limitations but may never exceed the State standards. The institution is held to standards because they ,too, are licensed. Many of those standards relate to Nursing Practice. There are national institutions like the Federal Government, and Joint Commission on Healthcare Accreditation. There are also various laws and regulations relating to civil rights, privacy rights and patient rights. As professionals, we are responsible for maintaing awareness as they are updated, altered and revised.

3. The state that one practices in limits by legislation, restricting us from performing proceedures that we are not trained to do. We are also prohibited from describing our certification greater than that actually gained. People who are not licensed by the state are forbidden to identify thenselves as nurses. There are additional limits to our practice related to our job-site. In other words, the state board of nursing might say that a nurse who graduated from an accredited nursing program is allowed, or that it is in "the scope of practice" for her to inject a bolus of medication intraveinously. My current place of employ prohibits it, even in an emergency. I am limited by the most restrictive regulation in all cases.

4. The kinds of behavior helping to support the professional cachet of nursing are fairly simple. First, to maintain one's own and one's patients dignity. To uphold the highest personal and work related standards. To remain polite to one's co-workers. To continue and encourage others to continuous education.

5. I'm not sure what this one means.

6. I think that ethics can be best described as adherance to the uninforcible. What makes people behave with honor, even when they are alone and unlikely to ever be discovered? That is ethics, the drive that brings a nurse to identify a med error that no one would know about, to count and lock up hundreds of dollers found on a homeless man hit by a car. Nurses are among the most ethical people I know, as those two examples are not hypothetical, but actually happened.