Studying in a nursing school may often be challenging as students receive vast amounts of new information without being able to practice it properly. Thus, when finally obtaining this opportunity, many novice nurses become confused as they do not have basic experience in communicating with patients (Manoochehri et al., 2015). When I was in nursing school, I remember not receiving some essential knowledge like how to deal with complex patients and address their needs carefully and correctly. Nevertheless, knowing core patient-centered care competencies is vital for all medical workers to improve the quality of services provided. When becoming a novice nurse myself, the primary focus of my work was to ensure that patients received their medicine on time. Therefore, I believe that healthcare students were not educated enough throughout the curriculum and did not learn to deliver patient-centered care at a higher quality. The following example proves my opinion.
There was a situation when a novice nurse reported to me that she could not teach a patient how to administer insulin, which made the inexperienced nurse stressed out. Since one of the core competencies of patient-centered care is to find ways to help clients communicate their issues (“QSEN competencies,” n.d.), I talked to the client, and the further assessment revealed that she was not able to see and did not have her eyeglasses. In addition, the patient’s sister appeared to have a learning disability and could not become responsible for learning insulin administration. However, I was pressured by management to discharge the patient. Finally, I managed to get an endocrinologist to follow her closely and change their insulin to PO, and I believe this was the best I could do in such a case.
In my opinion, this situation represents the possible and rather common challenges a nurse may face when communicating with clients and making a decision about their treatment or discharge. What is more, this is a great example proving the necessity of possessing core competencies in order to make sure that the quality of provided medical services is high. For instance, a nurse should identify, care about, and respect a patient’s expressed needs and differences, as well as relieve their pain (Manoochehri et al., 2015). Nurses also have to educate patients and have clear communication with them (“QSEN competencies,” n.d.). Unfortunately, the novice nurse in the story I told did not possess these competencies, even though they are vital for quality improvement as they allow establishing a strong connection and collaboration with clients.
Overall, I regret not paying more attention to the new nurse or helping her with her inexperience. I could give her some advice on the example of this situation we both were involved in. For instance, I should have told her about additional core competencies, including the necessity to speak and listen to our patients correctly, ask the right questions, support them, advocate for them, and eliminate possible issues (Edgman-Levitan & Schoenbaum, 2021). I hope that all novice nurses learn to do that in the future.
References
Edgman-Levitan, S., & Schoenbaum, S. C. (2021). Patient-centered care: Achieving higher quality by designing care through the patient’s eyes. Israel Journal of Health Policy Research, 10(21). Web.
Manoochehri, H., Imani, E., Atashzadeh-Shoorideh, F., & Alavi-Majd, A. (2015). Competence of novice nurses: Role of clinical work during studying. Journal of Medicine and Life, 8(4), 32–38.
QSEN competencies. (n.d.). QSEN Institute. Web.