92434 Professional Identity

Section 1: Personal Nursing Philosophy 

Philosophy of nursing mainly helps in stating the thoughts of the nursing professionals about what they believe to be true about the nature of the profession and helps in providing the basis of the nursing activities.

One of the most important philosophy on which my nursing behavior is based is PROVIDING PERSON CENTERED CARED that includes the maintenance of dignity as well as humanity. I believe that as a nursing professional, I need to understand the individual needs of the people and show them compassion and empathy. It is important for all professionals to provide care in a way by which the patients feel respected and cared as these ensures patient satisfactions (Dhanke & Dreher 2015). I always need to be accountable about the decisions and actions I undertake and I need to answer for my one judgment and actions. I believe in putting the patient at the centre of the care planning procedures. This is important as providing person centered care and making the patient an equal partner in taking decisions about his own health help them in feeling empowered. This has positive impacts on his health (Master 2015).

One of my philosophies is to exhibit myself in way by which patients can easily approach me with their concerns without any negative feelings. For developing this, I try my best to EXHIBIT EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS. These are are very important as it enables development of therapeutic relationship with the patients. Development of a bond with the patient basing on mutual trust and respect are very important. Therefore, human dignity, integrity, autonomy, altruism and social justice are some of the principles that would form the foundation of my nursing profession.

The above mentioned two aspects are my personal nursing philosophy that I have developed following the “UTS Bachelor of Nursing Graduate Attributes”

Section 2: Professional Nursing Standards

Engaging in the therapeutic and professional relationships is one of the most important standards that need to be followed by nursing professionals. The standard two provided by the “NMBA Standards Of Practice For Registered Nurses”
 states “engaging in therapeutic and professional relationship with patients as well as with other healthcare professionals”.  By following the standard, I have realized that every nursing professional need to maintain the boundary between professional and personal relations and accordingly develop, sustain and conclude the relationship (Jones & Wright 2017). Often in many scenarios, the patients might be happy with my service and might want to gift me objects or might invite me to their houses and many others. Accepting such gifts or invitations would result in breaching of the principle as this might lead to different types of obligation, and so I have to be very careful in maintaining this boundary. Moreover, the standard also speaks of the importance of marinating effective communication with the patient in order to be respectful of the dignity and autonomy of the patient (Richardson, Percy & Hughes 2015). Researchers are of the opinion that effective communication helps in developing therapeutic relationship with the patient and this in turn ensures development of mutual trust and bonding between the patient and the professionals (Haydon, Reit & Browne 2015). This helps in increasing patient satisfaction. It is also important for recognizing that people are the experts in their one life. Studies suggest that person centered care to patients helps in putting them at the center of decision-making. This makes them feel empowered and helps them to be an equal partner in the decision-making procedure in their care planning. This enables them to practice their own rights over their own lives that have positive outcomes on both their mental and emotional well-being (Robertson, Fenton & Barnard 2015). In many cases, it might happen that the patients do not have equal access to different community services due to their poor health literacy or due to their social and economic condition. In such areas, it becomes the duty of the professionals to provide support to them and help them in accessing resources and helping them in optimizing different of the health-related problems (Registered nurse standards for practice 2016). Often in many situations, I might have to handover information about patients to other professionals who would be attending the next shift or similar other scenarios. Therefore, I need to be very careful while delegating, supervising, coordinating, consulting and referring patients to other professionals. Ineffective delegation may lead to medication errors and suffering of the patients. Effective supervision and coordination among the members within a multidisciplinary team is also important in order to ensure effective care delivery. Coordination, effective communication, collaboration, exchange of feedbacks is important to ensure every members of the team are aware of all the conditions and progress of the patients and goals and priorities set by the team for the betterment of the nurses are met. Though evidence based practices and continuous professional developments, it is important for professionals to adopt all practices that would ensure a culture of safety in the workplace by engaging with other healthcare professionals. Another very important action that would be taken by me is to ensure development of an organizational culture that would have a blame-free environment. This will help in reporting of unethical practices, medication errors and different other types of legal breaches. This would help in development of the quality of service for the future helping in releasing the training requirements of professionals and accordingly taking interventions for them

Reference List

Dahnke, M.D. & Dreher, H.M., 2015. Philosophy of science for nursing practice: Concepts and application. Springer Publishing Company.

Haydon, G., van der Reit, P., & Browne, G. 2015. A narrative inquiry: Humour and gender differences in the therapeutic relationship between nurses and their patients. Contemporary nurse, vol 50 no. 2-3, pp 214-226.

Jones, E.S. & Wright, K.M., 2017. “They’re Really PD Today” An Exploration of Mental Health Nursing Students’ Perceptions of Developing a Therapeutic Relationship With Patients With a Diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder. International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, vol  6 no 5, pp.526-543.

Masters, K., 2015. Role development in professional nursing practice. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.

Registered nurse standards for practice 2016, NMBA Retrieved from: https://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/Codes-Guidelines-Statements/Professional-standards/registered-nurse-standards-for-practice.aspx retrieved on 8th August, 2018

Richardson, C., Percy, M. & Hughes, J., 2015. Nursing therapeutics: teaching student nurses care, compassion and empathy. Nurse Education Today, vol  35 no 5, pp. e1-e5.

Roberts, J.F., Fenton, G. & Barnard, M.C., 2015. Developing effective therapeutic relationships with children, young people and their families. Nursing children and young people,  vol 27 no. 4, pp.30-35