Nurses play a crucial and essential role in delivering patient’s quality of care, being the most direct caregivers for many of them. Nurses like Florence Nightingale, Isabel Hampton, and Lilian Wald were heroes who provided a tremendous knowledge that nowadays we are still using, and made a profound difference in the quality of care of patients, being their legacies followed today (Black, 2017, p. 324). Nursing has evolved in various aspects meaning that many changes have occurred in ways that are responsive to changes in the environment we are surrounded for. One of the changes we can observe in which this nursing field has evolved is gender equality knowing that in previous decades, and when Florence Nightingale started her nursing profession was a female dominated career where only women were the ones who provided care for patient, but today many males’ candidates are practicing the profession and are involved in patient’s care.
The way they used to dress was totally different and not the same we use to wear today, they worn long white dresses, white hats, and white stockings, and nowadays nurses wear comfortable and beautiful scrubs, no hats, no dresses, and appropriate shoes and socks as well. As time has passed nurses have grown into highly specialized, and respected members of health care teams being a key element of the healthcare industry. Nursing education 100 years ago was a more direct training on how to address doctors, while nursing education today is more complex, formal, and comprehensive than it was before. Actually, today we as nurses need to take a complex and national exam as a requirement for becoming a licensed RN. While we get more knowledge and foundation of a stronger education we take into consideration the patient’s responsibility in our shoulders, and especially when we become advanced practice nurses.
The impact of technology has allowed nurses become more precise, and efficient, alleviating some of the physical demands. The way nurses do their job today is easier than before keeping in mind that patient’s records are digital helping us with less paperwork, and preventing human mistakes on charts, that way is easier for us while doing an assessment on a patient. Another advantage we have with technology use is using the mobile apps to look up any medical information, as well as the special beds and chairs providing us a more comfortable environment as we don’t have to do so much heavy lifting (Dawn, 2016).
Today, Nursing is what I expected when I entered this education. Although I never imagined being a nurse, I’m more than happy and proud of myself for having chosen this beautiful career. This teaches me every day to be a better person and value the love and care I provide to people who really need my help. I always thought about the tremendous responsibility I would have while dealing with real people who are really sick, but I’m always eager to learn new things and expand my knowledge to be more successful in my life and be the great nurse I always dreamt of when I decided to get into this field.
References:
Black, B. P. (2017). Professional nursing: concepts & challenges. 8th ed. St. Louis, Mo.:
Saunders/Elsevier.
Dawn, P. (2016, August 3). Nursing is in transformation, and that’s good for nurses. Retrieved
from http://blog.nurse.org/2016/08/03/
REPLY 2
Nursing is one of the fields that require much attention, dedication, and passion concerning how nurses treat patients under their care. Nursing program entails taking care of patients, this involves giving them guidelines on various issues such as medication, feeding and dietary habits as well as offering assistance to patients with various medical challenges to ensure their good stay while at the health care facility. Nurses plays a pivotal role of assisting doctors identify the best care plan for patients. They are also involved in executing the care plan offered by doctors and can sometimes advice doctors more about the health condition of patients since they spent most of the time with the patients (Ronquillo, Currie & Rodney, 2016). While most people enter the nursing profession with the wrong mental perspective that nursing is a simple duty, some of them drop out during the training program as the task requires much dedication and perseverance as one interacts with diverse people with different health complications. While the different people may have various personalities, the nurse is expected to display high level of professionalism and care to patients, which calls for ethical values as a nurse (Clavijo, de Julián Romero & Paniagua, 2016). Although I expected nursing to be quite challenging while I was taking my nursing program, I never thought it would be that hard. The modern evolution trends have drastically changed the nursing roles unlike in the past.
During my studies as a nurse, I thought the nursing profession would be hard since I could see various nurses doing their duties with ease. When I visited the some of the healthcare facilities within my locality, I would see nurses doing their work perfectly and enjoying interacting with different patients and examining their medical conditions. For me, I was passionate about the profession since I like assisting people who are suffering from various conditions. Therefore, nursing was a good choice for me since I was able to identify the various people with different medical conditions and assist them to recover. However, I never thought that the task would be that difficult. I thought the task was easy while I was taking the nursing program in college until I entered the actual profession. I realized that the task was not as easy as I thought since most of the times, I found myself interacting with different patients with various medical conditions and who have different medical illnesses.
Working at the ICU was challenging for me since I found myself working with patients who were facing different critical issues. When I entered the nursing profession, I thought that nursing involved taking care of patients and giving them directions on how they would take their drugs as well as assisting doctors in treatment of patients. I never imagined that nurses play a more involving and critical role than the doctors assigned to treat the patients. I found myself working for more hours in a day than I expected. At times, I would work both day and night taking care of different patients since the nurses in my healthcare facility was limited. I realized that nursing has greatly changed and the profession has become more involving since nurses perform some of the task that doctors do not do.
Arguably, the nursing role has changed drastically since I have been using most of my time in the hospital taking care of patients, giving them directions on dietary habits and offering emotional support to different patients. This is one of the aspects that have drastically changed since I left my nursing program from college.
References
Clavijo, M. C., de Julián Romero, F. J., & Paniagua, M. V. (2016). Evolution of education in nursing. Medwave, 16(6), e6505-e6505.
Ronquillo, C., Currie, L. M., & Rodney, P. (2016). The evolution of data-information-knowledge-wisdom in nursing informatics. Advances in nursing science, 39(1), E1-E18.
All replies must be constructive and use literature where possible
Your assignment will be graded according to the grading rubric.