Professional or Technical

[TraceyS]

Do you consider nursing to be more of a technical or professional field?

With the use of research to develop evidence based practice, the move to further education for nurses, and the growth of nurses to become a more influential part of the healthcare system, do you think nurses should develop more standards one way or the other?

Do we need more schooling and higher degrees, or do we need to establish more unions? Do both go together?

Some people may say it doesn't matter, but the way others percieve nursing may affect the direction of wages, reimbursement, working conditions and the direction of nursing practice itself.

What are people thinking about this subject?

[wif411]

pofessional

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

Sorry Tracey but you seem to have abotu 10 questions nested in that post.

1) We are defintely a profession but I will not belabour the hair splitting and semantics that often go with that ascertion to me, nursing is a profession end of story.

2) Yes we need more evidence based practice and meaningful standards but before we can do this we deperately need to adress the practice theory gap and research what nurses actually do on a day to day basis. (we know what we do but we need it researched)

3) You Americans need more unions if the problems on the board are anything to go by. :chair: Forget about the semanitcs of whether unions are the province of blue collar workers. If you want to call your group a "federation" or some other name go for it but you need a professional group willing to stand up for you and fight for things like "No Lift" policies

I am an ardent advocate for evidence based practice and proudly share the Joanna Briggs Institutes website. The JBI is Australian and founded by a nurse but it's focus is nursing and allied health a case of nursing LEADING the other professions.

[caroladybelle, BSN, RN]

My answer is the same as the last time and time before that, that people have posed much the same question/thread.

As you have gotten few responses to repeated inquiries, it might be helpful to use the search feature to get more info?