Running head: PROFESSIONAL NURSING 1

Elements of Professional Nursing

Lyubov Kirillov

Frostburg State University

PROFESSIONAL NURSING 2

Elements of Professional Nursing

Many patients often do not realize that their inpatient hospital stay requires an

interdisciplinary team collaboration which consists of doctors, nurses, pharmacy,

physical/occupational therapy, laboratory services, case management, and other hospital

services. The Baccalaureate Essential VI of American Association of Colleges of Nursing

(AACN) (2008) state that Effective communication and collaboration among health

professionals is imperative to providing patientcentered care (p. 22). Nurses are trained to

communicate with doctors using an SBAR which stands for Situation, Background, Assessment,

and Recommendation. According to AACN (2008) health professionals are encouraged to teach

future clinicians interdisciplinary team approach stressing the issue of effective communication,

Interprofessional education is defined as interactive educational activities involving two or

more professions that foster collaboration to improve patient care (p.22).

Exemplar

Nurses always must use their nursing judgement when caring for patients and often

nurses act as patients advocates. To better understand nurses role in a professional setting

AACN (2008) gives a description of effective communication Fundamental to effective

interprofessional and intra-professional collaboration is a definition of shared goals; clear role

expectations of members; a flexible decision-making process; and the establishment of open

communication patterns and leadership (p. 22). Many times, nurses collaborate with doctors to

change patients course of treatment making it more or less aggressive depending on the possible

outcome and patients needs and desires. The Complete Issue Analysis first goal was to

demonstrate independent nursing roles and collaboration of nurses with doctors and other health

care team members. The second goal shows that even though there is an increase in nurses, the
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nursing shortages is still the major problem in health care. Health care organizations are trying

to recruit more registered nurses by making the hospital setting more alluring to work. Increasing

the amount of non-nursing work performed by the nurses could reduce this potential work pool.

In addition, increased interest in nursing does not automatically result in increased numbers of

nurses due to the multiple issues faced by nursing programs such as the aging nurse faculty,

insufficient salaries for nursing faculty, and limitations on clinical space (Hertel, 2012).

Reflection

AACN (2008) states Interprofessional education enables the baccalaureate graduate to

enter the workplace with baseline competencies and confidence for interactions and with

communication skills that will improve practice, thus yielding better patient outcomes (p. 22).

Learning the effective way of communication allows nurses to provide evidence based safe

patient care and collaboration with other health care professionals. Professional nursing

encompasses different roles of nursing including teaching and health promotion and disease

prevention. Health care organizations must figure out a way to reduce nursing turn over. New

opportunities and new roles for nurses may attract more people into the profession. In addition,

more hospitals hire newly graduated nurses for a residency program that requires a minimum of

two-year contract. This particular strategy seems like a temporary solution and the hospital will

have to promise a more catching opportunity to competent nurses.

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References

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2008). The essentials of baccalaureate

education for professional nursing practice. Washington, DC: American Association of

Colleges of Nursing.

Hertel, R. (2012). Health Care Reform and Issues in Nursing. Academy of Medical-Surgical

Nurses, 21(1): 3-7.