Professionalism in nursing

[yayat]

Has nursing achieved professional status?

Can we discuss about issues related in nursing professionalism ect:

1. evidence based practice

2.Graduate nurses

3.autonomy in practice

4.compentency based

5.nurses association

And issues based on criteria of nursing profession.

1.Intellectual

2.body of knowledge

3.practical and theoretical.

4.organization

5.standards of practice

[time4meRN]

Sounds like some ones writting a thesis. I think your answer to this may differ depending on the type of nurse that replies. After doning management for many years I would say that the poweres to be would consider the first list to be an indicator of prof. of nursing. However, my true honest answer is the latter. If I think of what truly makes a difference in a pt's life (living or dying) it would be the second list. A nurse can have all the theories in the world, but function like a fish out of water when push comes to shuve in a critical situation. If a loved one is lying dying in an ER, I would say that if you were to ask any family member, skill would be their first choice. Everything else at that point is out the window. I also think the two lists are interchangabel in many ways. I also think that the medical profession as a whole needs to get back to basics. We've made things way too complicated , it seem schools and coorporations have lost the reason why we are all there in the first place. Not to make nice hotel- like stays, not to make everyone happy, we are there to save lives. Everynurse should be rapid response nurse capable in my estimation.I don't care how they can complete a research project. No nursing has not obtained prof status. But I'm not sure that some of the things listed would necassarily acheive that either.

[lpnQT25]

I don't know if this is the right place to bring this up, but when I saw your topic it got me stirring. This issue of proffessionalism @ my hospital I work at has gone to the dogs! I work a med-surg unit, and we have nurses adies on our floor. I see a bad trend of hirees recently that all think they are there to Hang out & have fun. They stand around, chat about personal stuff all the time, including over a patients bed while changing them.... this is only a small piece of it. I have caught them cutting corners on things like vital signs, I & O'S, they leave the rooms a mess..... It is to the point I am ashamed to work there at times.... I have already been to the floor supervisor twice..... She assured me she would address it....... well if she even did... it made no impact..... I don'y want to keep mentioning it to her as I don't want to alienate my co-workers... Believe me we have some excellent aides... just far & few between.. any suggestions would be great!

[Hellllllo Nurse, BSN, RN]

I do not think nursing is truly a profession. We are struggling to become one, but are not there yet.

I feel the primary evidence which demonstrates that nursing is not a true profession is our lack of power, control, and autonomy in practice.

We do not control nursing- how it is practiced, the resources needed, or the conditions in which we practice.

As individual nurses, it is like we are each in a stormy sea, being whipped about by the current and wind. We struggle to control the direction of our little dinghies, but we lack sails, a rudder, an engine.

1. How many members of a true profession are repremanded for staying over time without authorization?

2. How many members of a true profession are called into a supervisor's office and counseled for not behaving like happy servants with their "clients"?

3. How many true professionals experience having their knowledge, judgement, and opinions routinely discounted and disregarded?

4. How many true professions have a huge, ongoing issue with being mistreated, verbally abused, and talked down to by another profession?

5. How many true professionals find that their working environments and conditions are becoming more and more intolerable, yet they find themselves powerless to do anything to change the situation, other than to job hop?

I'm sure, that for a true profession, the answer to all of these questions is none.

NDX: Nursing- failure to become a profession, secondary to lack of power of the occupation as whole to control and direct its own practice, AEB: see 1-5 above.

[EmmaG, RN]

[banana]Hellllllo Nurse is my hero[/banana]

That post should be required reading in every nursing program. For starters...

[Hellllllo Nurse, BSN, RN]

My goodness, Emmanuel.

Thank you.

:flowersfo

[EmmaG, RN]

My goodness, Emmauel.

Thank you.

:flowersfo

I love daisies!

:)

[llg, PhD, RN]

I agree with the general sentiment of Hellllo Nurse. While we have some of the foundations of a profession in place ... we still have some distance to go in other areas, particularly those that relate to power and autonomy.

Being an optimist -- and being able to hold conflicting beliefts at the same time -- I like to think of us as an "emerging profession." We exist as a profession in the sense that the idea is there and it a reality in some cases; but we are not yet sufficiently established as a profession that we are completely and undeniably a profession.

For example ... nurses DO have a reasonable amount of control over our academic curricula within the universities and in the area of professional licensure/certification/etc.. However, we don't have control of our own practice in most hospitals. The glass is half empty or half full depending on how you choose to look at it. I prefer to say we are an "emerging profession" which reflects the truth that we have taken some of the necessary steps along the path, but that we haven't fully arrived there yet.

[Hellllllo Nurse, BSN, RN]

......The glass is half empty or half full depending on how you choose to look at it.....

I think of it as a bedpan, rather than a glass-

To me, it's not whether it's half full or empty; it's what's in it.

[Hellllllo Nurse, BSN, RN]

I love daisies!

:)

Me, too. I think I have approx ten daisy print scrub tops.

[lvlissl2ebecca]

I see nothing professional about nursing at all. I see a lot being a new nurse .. more than maybe those with experience would notice. But, to me... seeing staff run around like a chicken with their head cut off every single minute of every day is not professional! Nor, is the stress level and tension felt on a daily basis. How can you even begin to call it a profession when there is absolutely no respect among the staff. You have this LPN and this RN who don't get along, or this LPN thinks because she's been an LPN for longer than this RN has been an RN that she knows more.. yet the RN knows that isn't true.. so they're both butt hurt and struggling to show that they know more. You have this CNA who refuses to listen to what the LPN has told her, the LPN writes her up because she just does not have the time or patience to MAKE this CNA do her job. THIS IS NOT PROFESSIONAL.. its a cluster fuc*. Regardless, I love my job and the "path" I have chosen and will never change it as far as I can see. And by definition a Profession is: a vocation requiring knowledge of some department of learning or science. Yes, it is a profession.. yet it lacks professionalism.

[EmmaG, RN]

Me, too. I think I have approx ten daisy print scrub tops.

I thought I had one too, until a patient said "Oooooo! I love posies!"

Oops.