As suggested by the International Council of Nurses (2010) and Raines (2011), nursing is a healthcare profession that encompasses independent as well as collaborative care of individuals, families, groups, and communities, in good health or bad health, and all settings, to ensure that the health and quality of life of these individuals are maintained from conception to death.
Simply put, the practice of nursing exist too, among other things: promote the health and quality of life of individuals, families, and communities; prevent illness; provide care to the sick, disabled, and dying individuals; provide health advocacy and education to individuals and populations for purposes of promoting a safe environment, and; to research to improve quality of care at our health institutions (ICN, 2010).
Nursing, in my view, is an attractive option for personal as well as professional career development. The desire to practice nursing, therefore, derives from personal experiences and a desire to make a positive impact on the lives of individuals. The desire to contribute towards addressing the shortage of registered nurses in the United States, as observed by Raines (2011), is also a key determinant in my quest to enroll in nursing practice.
There exist many assumptions and beliefs held by nurses about the nursing practice. As noted by Spouse (2000), entrants into the nursing practice “…perceive a nurses’ role as nurturing relationships requiring angelic patience, good humor, and compassion beyond normal endurance” (p. 732). Extant research into the nursing practice demonstrates that patients assume nurses to be ‘demigods’ in possession with ready solutions to the problems afflicting them, while other patients project some often misplaced beliefs that a nurse must always be efficient, must not be sadistic, must be approachable, and must always be cheerful (Spouse, 2000). In most cases, however, this is not usually the case as nurses are human beings too.
The major domains of the nursing discipline encompass people, health, and the environment. The people domain of nursing practice implies that “…people are holistic beings with interdependent and simultaneous physical, biophysical, psychological, cultural, social-political, interpersonal and spiritual dimensions” (NKU, 2011, para. 7). To provide an example, nurses should be guided by a philosophy that espouses dignity and respect to religious values when dealing with patients who subscribes to religious cults which do not believe in taking medicines.
The health domain “…encompasses the interactive elements of wellness, disease and dying; not merely the absence of disease” (NKU, 2011, para. 3). An example is curative care provided by nurses with the view to improve the quality of life of patients. Environment, on its part, is an all-inclusive phenomenon entailing a complex interplay between internal and external aspects. While the internal environment incorporates attributes of perceptions, biophysical aspects, values, and beliefs, the external environment includes aspects of society, cultural orientations, family, daily situations, and geophysical and physical attributes. Immunizations provided to children in a community setting serve as an example for the environment domain.
All the above nursing domains are interrelated. While people are exceptionally and intrinsically shaped throughout the lifespan by sustained interaction with the environment, and while health is to a large extent influenced by perceptions, choices, expectations, cultural mores, and the environment, research has demonstrated that environmental intervention can shape health by encouraging maximum responses to health risks (NKU, 2011).
The vision of the nursing practice into the future, in my view, must incorporate the provision of quality patient-centered services to ameliorate the pain and suffering experienced by patients in our health institutions. The quality of care must be improved.
As is the case in other fields, the nursing practice is also bedeviled with a multiplicity of challenges. As we negotiate into the future, it is expected that the challenges of longer working hours, uncooperative patients, lack of respect for nursing as a profession, and extra workloads due to shortage of nurses in the U.S. and globally, will certainly clog the nursing practice
Lastly, it is important to note that an emphasis on safety in service delivery, quality and efficiency in the provision of care, the effectiveness of practice, and continuing education program development will be my set goals for professional and career development.
Reference List
International Council of Nurses. (2010). Definition of Nursing. Web.
Northern Kentucky University. (2011). Mission and Philosophy. Web.
Raines, Deborah A. (2011). What attracts second degree students to a career in nursing? Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 16(1), 1-9.
Spouse, J. (2000). An impossible dream? Images of nurses held by pre-registration students and their effect on sustaining motivation to become nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 32(3), 730-739.