Images of Professional Nursing in Health Education
Nursing is a multi-faceted profession because it involves service delivery in various fields that are aimed at ensuring the health of a community is promoted. Health education is an important sector in the nursing practice because of the role nurses play in ensuring they promote healthy practices in society. First, nurses are community educators because they promote practices like proper dieting and physiological activities that help people to keep their bodies healthy (Ryan, Twibell, Brigham and Bennett 2000). Nurses educate and advise communities, patients and their families on how to balance their diets to ensure they do not consume unhealthy foods. Secondly, nurses are indispensable in promoting palliative care to patients and they do this by advising them and their family members on how to manage long-term diseases (Wood and Atkins 2006). Thirdly, they are at the forefront in ensuring that patients and their families understand the need for medical interventions in ensuring that they are healthy and can manage diseases easily. Nursing health education reduces the time and cost of managing patients and ensures nurses have less work.
Nursing Leadership from Individual and Community Perspectives
Nurses are leaders because they champion the fight against diseases and ensure people are healthy (Wood and Atkins 2006). The leadership roles of nurses as individuals are evident in how they manage different health situations and develop innovations that ensure diseases are managed properly. Nurses are indispensable in policy formulation to compel governments and relevant authorities to implement measures that will ensure health care services are offered appropriately (Ryan, Twibell, Brigham and Bennett 2000). In addition, they lead fights against diseases by conducting research, public awareness campaigns and community-based approaches that ensure the health of people is safeguarded. Health is not an individual’s concern because people are social beings and they share food, air, water, shelter and public facilities (Wood and Atkins 2006). Therefore, nurses focus on communal interventions in ensuring they lead the public in embracing healthy practices like vaccination and proper sanitation.
Nursing Perspective to Members of the Multidisciplinary Health Care Team in Health Promotion
Nurses are indispensable members of the nursing fraternity because they access whether patients are able to offer self-care or require the assistance of caregivers. Therefore, they determine whether a patient will be admitted into a hospital or discharged (Wood and Atkins 2006). This means that they are important in determining where patients will receive medical attention and allows other health practitioners to attend to patients at designated places. In addition, nurses are in regular contact with patients; therefore, they observe and make comments about their progress (Ryan, Twibell, Brigham and Bennett 2000). These reports are important in ensuring doctors offer quality services to patients. Lastly, nurses offer palliative care to patients and this is very important in ensuring the efforts of other health care practitioners achieve their objectives (Wood and Atkins 2006). Poor after-treatment care can worsen health complications and increase treatment period, introduce opportunistic infections or cause death.
Caring-Based Nursing Practice
Nursing is a unique profession because the roles of nurses do not just end at health care facilities. Nurses must make follow-ups on their patients and ensure they follow doctors’ prescriptions. In addition, they make regular visits to home-based patients to ensure they make positive progress (Wood and Atkins 2006). This means that nursing is more than just providing health care services to patients because it involves other interventions like counseling and research that ensure patients recover within the shortest time possible.
Nursing Situations and Discovery of Knowledge
Nurses are important in transforming nursing because of the following reasons. First, they are in close contact with patients and this means that their reports are important in developing interventions that ensure they offer quality services (Wood and Atkins 2006). Secondly, they are involved in nursing research to ensure new knowledge is generated to improve this profession. In addition, they conduct regular assessments on the effectiveness of medical strategies in managing diseases (Ryan, Twibell, Brigham and Bennett 2000). This helps this practice to adopt practices that are effective in promoting good health. Lastly, they are indispensable in recommending changes in medical interventions to ensure effective measures are adopted in preventing diseases and promoting quality palliative care services.
References
Ryan, M., Twibell, T., Brigham, C. and Bennett, P. (2000). Learning to care for clients in their world, not mine. Journal of Nursing Education, 39(9), 401-408.
Wood, M. J. and Atkins, M. (2006). Immersion in another culture: one strategy for increasing cultural competency. Journal of Cultural Diversity, 13(1), 50-54.