Nursing
Topic 1:
What does professional commitment mean to you? Give an example.
Comment 1:
(Lorraine)
Personally, professional commitment is the responsibility to my patients, co-workers and my job. Number 2 provision of the Nursing act stated: “The nurse’s primary commitment is to the patient, whether an individual, family, group, community, or population.” Professional commitment for me is the sense of duty and obligation to the nursing career that I have I chosen. Sometimes because of the challenges that we are facing, being committed to our job is so hard. I think the healthcare industry has many dedicated workers. Even though there are times we do not feel to go to work, we have the sense of responsibility to our patients and co-workers. We know that if we do not show up for work, it will be harder for our patients and co-workers.
ANA holds that nurses in all roles and settings must recognize their responsibility for ethical practice environments and therefore must have access to resources that facilitate assessment, reflection, and support for education to improve ethical practice. Nurses in all roles and all settings desire and deserve to work in an ethical environment that respects the inherent dignity of every patient and every nurse. An ethical professional practice environment facilitates nursing care that prioritizes ethical reflection and inquiry, allows for expression of varying viewpoints without fear of reprisal, and promotes professional and ethical values and trust.
ANA supports initiatives providing ongoing ethics and ethical practice education for the nursing workforce in all roles and all settings. This education should include but not be limited to the definitions and principles of ethics in general, and bioethics, nursing, and organizational ethics specifically. Ethics education should include ongoing access to ethics resources/materials such as the Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (ANA, 2015a) (the Code) and opportunities for discussion of ethics topics and simulated situations without fear of retribution.
References:
What is the Nursing Code of Ethics? | Nurse.org (Links to an external site.) https://nurse.org/education/nursing-code-of-ethics/#:~:text=Currently%2C%20the%20nurse%E2%80%99s%20code%20of%20ethics%20contains%209,and%20safety%20of%20the%20patient.%20More%20items…%20
Comment: 2
(anne)
Professional commitment to me means being true to the meaning of the profession. The meaning of nursing profession is caring and lifelong learning. Being committed to nursing means staying on top of all the current research and ensuring that patients are receiving the best care possible. Nursing is also about making sure that the emotional part of the patient is taken care of as well. I think this is something that is missing in today’s nursing world because we are too busy to take the time and do emotional check ins. When working as a floor nurse too many times I would see the interactions of the other nurses that were so flat and uncaring that it made me question why they are nurses. I think too many people get into nursing for the money and lack the caring part of the profession. We as nurses deal with people on the worst day of their life sometimes and their families if we can’t support them and provide emotional caring the we are not being true to the profession.
Topic 2:
Do you believe that nurses as lobbyists are essential to the growth of nursing as a profession? Why or why not?
Comment 1:
(tate)
I believe that nurses as lobbyists are very much essential to the overall growth of the nursing profession because the nursing profession is a leading and largest medical profession where nurses as lobbyists enable themselves to be supporters and advocates for their patients.
Nurses educate the patients regarding the medical services, terms, and understand the interest and needs of patients and empower the patients and advocate on specific healthcare policies or legislation and advocate on behalf of them and lobby these issues and enhance the growth of the nursing profession. Nurses as lobbyists enhance the growth of nursing profession because when nurses lobby, they would develop the potential to influence policymaking and politics in the nursing profession. The role of nurses when engaged as lobbyists in the legislation impacts the patient’s health outcomes. When nurses influence the policymaking decisions and politics as lobbyists it would enable them to improves the care delivery process by advocating for the patients they serve. Nurses when they join their voices together and be united can bring an innumerable change to the overall nursing profession and can influence the growth of the nursing profession because they can involve actively in policymaking and plays and legislation matters and enhance the care delivery process by supporting the policies that affect the healthcare positively”
As the largest health profession in the world, nurses can wield great power when they work collaboratively with others and use evidence about health care outcomes to enact important changes in health policy” (Groenwald, & Eldridge, 2020 p.1). Politics, power, and predictability of nursing care. In Nursing Forum (Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 16-32). As the nursing profession is one of the largest professions globally and nurses are the major workforce in the healthcare industry, they can work collaboratively to lobby in policymaking and political matters and take part actively in political formulation as this will influence the overall nursing professional growth. The growth of the nursing profession lies in the hands of nurses when they voice together to address these issues and advocate for patients and strive to formulate policies that enhance patient healthcare outcomes the growth of the nursing profession will have no boundaries.
References
Groenwald, S. L., & Eldridge, C. (2020, January). Politics, power, and predictability of nursing care. In Nursing Forum (Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 16-32).
Comment 2:
(Erika)
I am not absolutely sure if I do believe that nurses as lobbyists are essential to the growth of nursing as a profession. I have always believed that hard work, commitment, honesty and self-application to advanced education are crucial to growth in nursing and other professions. I suppose it doesn’t hurt to have nurses out there advocating for the nursing profession to better things for us as a whole, however, if it’s only for individual self-gain, promotion and power, then no, I don’t believe that’s good. I think that maybe we’ve all lobbied for better work environment to an extent in our own employment locations at some point or another, so more locally and specific, but not sure I could do the governmental thing or level.
The WCU video on this subject matter was interesting and I suppose because of some of the lobbyist activities for nurses it may have benefitted the nursing profession sometimes, which is good. The Overtime (OT) issue was a good one that helped professional nurses get paid for the OT they provided to patients and so, yes, that was a very good thing. (Nurs 440-Issuesand trends in nursing, 2021)
Issues and trends in nursing (2021). Policy and politics: Understanding the connection and importance of getting involved and mandatory overtime in nursing. Interactive video. Dashboard: https://webapps.srm-app.net/CanvasContent/SF/WCU_NURS_440_DE_TEMPLATE/Presentations/Week%206%20Presentations/story_html5.html (Links to an external site.)
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Solution
Peer Responses
Reply comment One (Lorraine)
In your comment, you have described several aspects of being professionally committed as a nurse, including taking care of patients, co-workers, and the nursing job in general. You also have indicated professional commitment as a sense of duty and obligation on the activities towards patient care. You may also suggest that professional commitment is love and loyalty to the profession, especially for service-oriented professions such as nursing. In the direction of the nursing profession, Jafaraghaee et al. (2017) define professional commitment as “the desire to stay in a profession” and a sense of responsibility to the particular problems and challenges attached to the profession in promoting optimal patient care. This broadens the definition of the profession to include the intention to stay, even in facing challenges.
Comment 2 (Anne)
In your comment, you have defined professional commitment as being true to the meaning of the profession. This can be translated as being loyal to the profession, which is a general definition of commitment. You have added on the definition of nursing, which means lifelong learning and patient care. Inclusion of learning in your definition broadens the meaning commitment because the nursing profession requires continuous learning, which is essential for safe and updated models of care. According to Immonen et al. (2019), continuous learning is an effective strategy to boost competence among nurse practitioners, which improves confidence and love for nursing. Improved confidence and competence would also enhance the ability to solve numerous challenges the nurses always face in their profession and thus reduce the intention to leave.
Topic 2
Comment 1 (Tate)
Nurses form the most significant number of medical professionals and are usually the healthcare providers who spend much of their time with the patients. As you have indicated in your comment, nurses are entitled to be supporters and advocates to their patients because they clearly understand their needs and challenges that should be resolved to enhance patient care quality. The nurses stand as the pillars for healthcare services and thus should play a part in lobbying and advocating for the rights and needs of the patients and safe working environments. According to Anders (2021), nurses should ensure patients’ safety and thus lobby and advocate for policies, rules, and regulations that enhance the quality and safety of care. You may also add on the importance of safeguarding the place of nurses in the healthcare system. Some laws that the states or federal governments may harm the nursing fraternity, including limitation of practice authority, deductions on salary, and denial of labor rights, which directly affects the nurses and not the patients. The nurses have the responsibility to lobby towards laws, regulations, and policies that improve their welfare. They can only win against unjust laws or policies when they a strongly bonded together.
Comment 2 (Erika)
From your response, the nurses do not need to be lobbyists in the growth and rising of the profession, and that the nurses only need to embrace hard work, commitment, honesty, and self-application. From your comment, lobbying is mostly meant for self-gain and not for the general population, and thus the nurses should majorly embrace hard work and concentrate on the duties of the profession. You contradict this statement by saying that it is important for the nurses to advocate for a better working environment at the local level. You have named several fruits earned from nursing lobbyists, such as increased overtime rates, which shows the positivity of lobbying in the nursing profession. Cziraki et al. (2018) note that policies and regulations at the state, organizational, and federal levels affect nurses’ motivation in joining or exiting the nursing profession. This indicates that the demotivating policies and regulations need to be amended to better the working conditions for the nurses in motivating more people to join the profession. This can only be done through lobbying and involvement of the nurses to give their views on what would motivate them for better nursing practices.
References
Anders, R. L. (2021, July). Patient safety time for federally mandated registered nurse to patient ratios. In Nursing Forum.
Cziraki, K., Read, E., Laschinger, H. K. S., & Wong, C. (2018). Nurses’ leadership self-efficacy, motivation, and career aspirations. Leadership in Health Services.
Immonen, K., Oikarainen, A., Tomietto, M., Kääriäinen, M., Tuomikoski, A. M., Kaučič, B. M. … & Mikkonen, K. (2019). Assessment of nursing students’ competence in clinical practice: a systematic review of reviews. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 100, 103414.
Jafaraghaee, F., Ebadi, A., Negarandeh, R., & Mehrdad, N. (2017). A professional commitment scale for clinical nurses: A study protocol. Medical journal of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 31, 123. https://doi.org/10.14196/mjiri.31.123