Introduction
Nursing is a profession in the health care provision sector which majorly deals with the care of the individual patients so as to make them gain and maintain optimal health. Those who do this type of work are called nurses and they are mostly found in institutions like hospitals, clinics, dispensaries among others (Chin, 2008). They are always in constant contact with the sick offering pieces of advice that would see to it that they regain their health. They are more close to patients than doctors and administrators who run these institutions.
Main body
This work that nurses do is affected by a variety of factors and each and every patient that they come into contact with is different from the previous one. This makes their job very tiring and always customizing ones self with the needs of the client. Some of the trends that shape this profession and affect their mode of service delivery can be categorized in a number of ways but basically, they are: social, political and economic.
Socially, the manner in which people live differs and what a given society considers a norm might be a vice in another community. When these two kinds of people seek the help of a nurse, they would thus expect different attention from him/her. This affects the work that a nurse does as he or she is forced to conform to the specific demands of the client at hand. Some people living in male chauvinistic societies would only expect to find female nurses at the hospitals. Should they get to the hospital; and placed under the care of a male nurse, they protest and this leaves the nurses baffled and at pains trying to offer assistance to the individuals (ibid).
Most of the social issues that affect the work done by nurses revolve mainly around gender issues. Men would find it hard to be bathed by females who are not their wives or close relatives. A sick male who is to spend days at the facility and is unable to bathe himself would only be bathed by the nurses and should the facility have fewer male nurses then the female nurses would be mandated with the bathing of the ailing males. This proves difficult and complicates the job of the nurse. The nurses are therefore forced to turn themselves into counselors and first offer counseling services to their clients before getting them to receive such intimate services. Some clients create fusses in matters as simple as being offered an injection. They completely detest the idea of a woman nurse being the ones to inject them.
Most societies to this day still believe that doctors are majorly males while nurses should be females. Such mindsets make it hard for male nurses to render their services as most of the clients openly ridicule and laugh at the male nurses and call them names. In such a situation the male nurses being humans would have to offer their services sparingly and this is in deed goes against the medical practitioners’ oath of always protecting lives.
Some social structures also over work the nurses. A society with rampant cases of wife battering will see to it that nurses are always busy with clients trotting in day and night. So is the case with a warring society (Radcliffe, 2000). In such a society, the numbers of people seeking medical attention are quite high and after being attended to by the doctors all of them are left at the mercies of the nurse thus over burdening them.
Politics on the other hand is the hearty beat of each and every nation. The lives of any citizen are affected by the type of government of the nation has. The practice of nursing is also pegged on the type of government in the country. Some of the nurses are civil servants and that is to mean that they work for the government in the state owned hospital. Such nurses interact directly with the government and politics on day to day basis. In some countries the management of the hospitals is through political appointees and nurses therefore have to work in accordance with the set preferences of the forces that enable them to earn such simple favors as promotions and transfers.
Another type of politics that directly affect the nurses’ service delivery is their own unions and right organizations. In each country there exists a union that fends for the rights of the nurses. Such institutions in most cases have always incited the nurses to abandon their roles and take to the streets in protest of poor working conditions and pay. While striking and demonstrating, their dear patients die and go without the most desired attention, this has often resulted in their clients losing faith in them and others die in absence of nurses. The moral lessons such patients get from the institutions are never positive.
The very third factor that affects experiences that nurses leave with their clients is economical. The vey direct way in which economical factors affect this is in the light that services offered by the nurses are normally paid for. A client who does not have a decent pay would not manage to pay the nurses for their services and this simply cuts them off from receiving the services offered by these important segment of the community.
The economic productivity of a society would also determine the quality of life that the people in the society live. People who go without food and can not afford balanced diets will always be at the health facilities soliciting for the services offered by the nurses. This situation is made worse by the fact that such people would not be in a position therefore to afford the services of the nurses that they would need the most. The nurses would therefore resort to offering their services to the community voluntary and in doing so they normally end up teaching their clients, who would turn up in large numbers ways of making themselves economically empowered.
The other very important aspect of economic factors that directly affect the lessons that the nurses offer to their clients is their own remuneration. A nurse should be paid by his or her employer decently so that they afford a decent life style (Chin, 2008). The decent lifestyle in itself is a lesson that the clients would learn from their nurses. It also improves the confidence of the nurse thus the tendency to have more self worth. The confidence that a client reads in the face of a nurse is a reassurance enough that he or she would live to see another day. On the contrary when nurses are poorly paid, this necessitates them dropping their tools of trade and taking to the streets in protests and this happens at the expense of patients.
Conclusion
In retrospect, nurses are a people that the society would not do without; the services that they offer are integral to the survival of the society and from them society learn real life lessons. It is therefore prudent that the society does all that it takes to keep them in business. All stakeholders must join hands to improve the field of trade for these very resourceful people in the society.
Reference list
Chin, P. L. (2008). Integrated Theory and Knowledge Developing In Nursing. St. Luis, MO: Mosby publishers.
Radcliffe, M. (2000). Doctors and Nurses: New Game Same Result. London: British Medical Association, 65(1), 16-22.