Role and Qualities of the Nursing Profession: Positive and Negative Sides

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In the present essay, the author gives his opinion about the role and qualities of the nurse as well as presents the results of his research about the profession of the nurse in the modern world.

Nursing Sample Essay

The health of the population is the most valuable achievement of the society, therefore, maintaining and strengthening is an important task, in which all must participate, without exception. Not the last role in accomplishing this task is assigned to hard-working professionals of the sphere – to nurses – as they are the main link of health care in the understanding f majority of people. Though, for many years, the prestige of the nurses’ work, their social status was decreasing. Now in many countries active and purposeful work is carried out to revive the nursing profession and its significance.

The reasons for the backwardness of nursing in developing countries are different:

• the belief that a nurse is an assistant to the physician who performs only auxiliary medical functions;
• neglecting of foreign experience;
• underestimation of scientific principles and approaches to the management and organization of nurses’ work and their professional training.

Often, the nurses are close to the patient in the first minutes of deterioration of his or her condition in a hospital or at home, providing first aid, psychological support to patients and their relatives. To whom does the patient come during the night duty in the hospital first? Who communicates with the patient several times per shift, knows about all his or her movements and changes of state during the day? Of course, it’s a nurse.

When you are in a hospital, there is always not enough warmth, participation, affectionate words. The nurse spends more time with the sick than the doctor, and she can comfort the patient. In general, for each of the professionals (the physicians) who are responsible for patients' lives, nurses are of extreme importance.

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The moral indicators are necessary

In the opinion of the author of the present essay nursing sample the following features are important for being a good nurse:

• mentality;
• emotional culture;
• the ability to perceive the feelings of a patient;
• education in responsibility;
• a sincere understanding of one’s duty to other people;
• the realization that only you can and should help a sick person to achieve the fullness of existence, that is, to become healthy.

A nurse is not just in the shadow of the treating doctor. Half a step away from his status, but this distance shortens the distance between her and the patient. She is a nurse. In the matter of nursing a sick patient, she is the main one (the first to help in any moment of time).

If it was formerly believed that, the nurse is an assistant doctor, now she is a competent, self-employed specialist who performs well-developed functions of nursing a patient. Outside the doctors’ offices, her the main time and attention is given to patients, prepares them for admission to the doctor, she helps to get the treatment prescribed by a doctor. The effectiveness of general practitioners largely depends on the qualification and proper organization of nurses’ work, on their efficiency and human qualities that are conscientiousness, accuracy, and warmth.

Real specialists can grow only from people who already by the beginning of their education have passed a sufficiently serious school of self-education and have not lost humanity in the storms of experience. They also have strengthened their soulfulness, did not become callous, did not close from human suffering, but became stronger and more confident in their own abilities. They learned to discipline themselves.

A nurse should make a good impression on a patient, starting with her appearance (tightness, orderliness, hairdo, facial expression). It is also important to have a partnership between a nurse and a patient as the patient should feel that a nurse wants to help him or her. Only then a trustful dialogue arises during which the nurse learns the information she needs about the patient, the characteristics of his or her personality, opinion about the disease, stagnation, hopes for recovery, plans for the future. During such interviews, the patient’s relationship with relatives, work, and other problems are revealed. All this information gives the nurse the opportunity to put her personal medical diagnosis.

At the same time, a nurse must always remember that partnering with patients should not be on back-slapping terms. The leading role always remains for a nurse. She sympathizes with the patient, establishes empathy between them, so a nurse is able to know the essence and depth of the patient’s experiences and sufferings, but she does not identify with his or her experiences. The patient should always be sure that their conversations are confidential.

Knowing the peculiarities of the patient’s experiences, his or her personality, the nurse tactfully explains to the patient not only his or her rights but also duties, tells in an accessible form for the patient about necessary examinations, preparation for them, about the forthcoming treatment. Refusal of the patient from any type of examination or treatment should not cause a negative attitude on the part of medical personnel.

The nurse’s duty is to be honest and truthful towards the patient, but conversations about the diagnosis, the characteristics of the disease can’t go beyond the limits indicated by the treating doctor. This also applies to the nurse’s interviews with the patient’s relatives.

The humanism of the profession creates the basis for protecting the personal dignity of the nurse, her physical integrity, the right to help in the performance of professional duties.

Nursing is an important part of any medical practice

There is no sense to argue about how necessary, important, beautiful profession of a nurse. In many nursing essay samples you can find the following characteristics of a nurse:

• nurses provide the necessary physiological and emotional support to patients because they spend most of their time with them;
• a nurse tries to understand the patient, patiently listening when he or she talks about anxieties and fears, and also strive to support and comfort her patients emotionally;
• when the patient is on the verge of death, the nurse needs to help him or her to meet death with as little suffering as possible and as it is possible with great dignity”.

A few years ago, 1200 professional nurses were asked: “What is most important in the work of a nurse for you?” 98 percent of them answered that the most important is to provide quality care.

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The other side of the story

However, along with the joys, the nurse’s work involves numerous difficulties. When giving medicine, taking blood, putting a dropper, or simply turning the patient over, the nurse must be very careful, especially in those countries where people like to sue medical personnel. So the nurse sometimes finds herself in difficult situations.

In nursing essay examples, it always emphasizes that the psychotherapeutic role of the nurse is very great, wherever she works. It was not by chance that in the beginning, when the Institute of nurses was only being created, they were called sisters of mercy because they cared not only about the body but also about the soul of the sick.

The art of nursing is the harmonious combination of creativity and the scientific validity of procedures, benefits, verbal influences, and conversations in the care of the patient, in the ability to sometimes protect the patient from the negative thoughts and feelings that are overwhelming him or her. Such protection is important for people of any age, but especially for children and the elderly. To implement it, the nurse must be ready to empathize, should show kindness, responsiveness, participation.

It should be recognized that a nurse's job is particularly in demand in human life. Given the widespread shortage of paramedical personnel, girls in white coats often have to work more than 14 hours a day, constantly moving and often without the time for a normal dinner.

The psychological and physical stress experienced by nurses, causes the percentage of various kinds of errors and abnormalities in nurses to be encountered more often than in other occupations. The strained work of the nurse negatively affects her health. As a result of the research, it was found that the life expectancy of nurses is on average 3-5 years less than in the representatives of other professions.

The shortage of nurses is felt everywhere. The work of nurses is a daily feat, as sometimes they have to put two or three bets on their fragile shoulders. Only love for the profession motivates them.

What are some additional qualities that a nurse should have? Above all, they are about:

• hard-working nature as well as external and internal clearness and modesty;
• being able to sympathize with someone else’s grief;
• the fact that a nurse must behave in such a way that the patient can trust her completely, without being embarrassed by any manipulation and procedure;
• such an important issue that at work, she must be able to forget about herself, about her home worries and problems, always be near the patient.

In the process of recovery, all links are equally important. If the doctor’s business is to treat pathology, then nurses help the patient psychologically cope with the disease.

Speaking of the labor issues, the nurse has probably some of the worst consequences of labor in regards to traumatic circumstances (great responsibility, constant stress, and communication with severe patients). It leads to a syndrome of an emotional deficit and emotional burnout. This is when there is no power to sympathize, and everything is done automatically.

However, it would be nice to believe that the role of the nurse will increase in the direction of increasing her professional competence. The professional and social status will increase, as well as the prestige of the profession, which will strengthen the specialists in nursing and, as a result, improve the provision of medical care.