Scope and Standards of Nursing Practice Essay
- Hello world! - October 21, 2020
The primary role of nurses in the healthcare system is to promote health and prevent illnesses in collaboration with allied health professionals. Additionally, nurses often ensure that they alleviate patient suffering through assisting the practitioner in the disease treatment. Moreover, nurses perform the advocacy role when caring for the patients, families, and communities. Significantly, the standards and scope of practice for nurses encompass many aspects pertaining to the delivery of nursing care. This paper explains how the scope and standard of nursing practice promote nursing as a discipline and a profession.
Primarily, the scope of nursing covers the “where” “what” “when” “who” “why”, and “how” of the practice. For example, the “why” of nursing care delivery is an evidence-based practice. The profession of nursing grows when the nurses make rational clinical decisions based on the research evidence (Stevens, 2013). “How” nurses deliver care is equally crucial as the nurse needs to understand the patient holistically apart from just a medical diagnosis (Beckford, & Ellis, 2013). In collaborative management, nurses are expected to be patient advocates who address the needs of the patients by seeking additional sources, thereby achieving the desired outcome (Tomajan, 2012). Therefore, the scope within which nurses practice not only helps the patient, but also advances the nursing profession.
In addition, the nurse is expected to follow the established standards of the professional performance such as assessing patients, developing a nursing diagnosis, identifying the outcome, planning and implementing the care plan. In conducting these activities, the nurse must uphold and enforce the ethical standards (Blais, 2015) such as patient confidentiality (Wang et al., 2013). When nursing students learn how to observe ethical consideration and keep patient information private, they become responsible nurses early in their career, thus, promoting nursing as a discipline.
To summarize, the standards and the scope of nursing practice are broad and varied. They structure the nursing profession and discipline as well as help them to develop. The standards include many aspects of patient care such as patient confidentiality, evidence-based practice, and ethical standards observation. When practicing nurses and nursing students follow the scope of practice and professional standards, the nursing profession and discipline prosper.
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References
Beckford, M., & Ellis, C. (2013). Developing nursing curriculum to facilitate the delivery of holistic care to the military veteran. Open Journal of Nursing, 3(05), 400. Retrieved from https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Developing+nursing+curriculum+to+facilitate+the+delivery+of+holistic+care+to+the+military+veteran&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5
Blais, K., & Hayes J. S. (2015). Professional nursing practice: Concepts and perspectives. Boston, MASS: Pearson.
Stevens, K. (2013). The impact of evidence-based practice in nursing and the next big ideas. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 18(2).
Tomajan, K. (2012). Advocating for nurses and nursing. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 17(1), A1. Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Vol-17-2012/No1-Jan-2012/Advocating-for-Nurses.html
Wang, J., Zhang, Z., Xu, K., Yin, Y., & Guo, P. (2013). A research on security and privacy issues for patient related data in Medical Organization System. International Journal of Security and Its Applications, 7(4), 287-298.