NURSING 7203 Introducing Professional Nursing

Nursing is one of the important fields in health care sector that aims to provide adequate care to the people with needs. The service provided by the nurse helps to individual in order to recover from various health issues and maintain their health and well-being in an effective manner (Christmals & Gross, 2017). In order to provide effective care it is important for the nurse to have adequate nursing skills and knowledge. In this regards the Registered nurse standard of practice provided by the nursing and midwifery board of Australia play an instrumental role.

In addition reflective practice is another important aspect that allows the nurses to improve their skills and practice (Dubé & Ducharme, 2015). Reflection on own practice allows the nurses to identify the mistakes and introduce effective strategies to address them and improve their skills in order to avoid such mistakes in future practice (Goulet, Larue & Alderson, 2016). The standard of practice provided by the AHPRA also helps the nurses to reflect on their practice (nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2018). In this critical reflection I will reflect on two standard of practice such as thinks critically and analyses nursing practice and engaging in therapeutic and professional relationships. It would help to understand the important of using such standards in clinical practice to improve the quality of service.

Thinks Critically and Analyses Nursing Practice

According to Zuriguel et al., (2015) critical thinking is one of the most important skills of the nurses that allows them to analyze a clinical situation critically by using their reasoning skill and introduce adequate nursing interventions in order to manage the situation in an effective manner. The ability of critical thinking develops based on the clinical problems that the nurses need to deal with. Pitt et al., (2015) has mentioned that critical thinking is the process of utilizing skilful reasoning. It is the ability of the nurses to question and reflect the reasoning process in order to ensure that the taken decision is effective enough to manage the particular clinical situation.

Hence it improves the decision making skill of a nurse as well (Rubenfeld & Scheffer, 2014). In order to think critically it is essential to have in depth understanding regarding the ideas, concepts, contents and theories of nursing. Skills and capacities of critical thinking helps a nurse to become self-directed. Thus, it is important to analyze the nursing practice by using critical thinking skill in order to take appropriate decision and introduce effective care approach for a particular patient (Pitt et al., 2015).

The registered nurse standard of practice provided by Nursing and midwifery board of Australia describes the effective aspects that need to be consider in order to use critical thinking for analyzing nursing practice. It has been stated in the guideline that it is required to analyze the evidence based approaches in order to identify the best method for providing safe and high quality service (nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2018). Zuriguel et al., (2015)  has described that involving in relevant research to identify best evidences is important for quality improvement.

The standard also defines that it is important to take a decision while considering the organizational and government regulations policies, legislations and guidelines in order to comply with the ethical framework. On the other hand, the guidelines explains the importance of reflection on own experience in order to improve the ability to think critically and analyze the nursing practice (nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2018). Pitt et al., (2015) has mentioned that reflective practice is essential to enhance the knowledge, beliefs, skills and actions and helps to understand the way in which critical thinking shapes the improved nursing practice.

The guidelines provided by the NMBA standard of nursing practice supports the ideas of critical thinking and also complies with the guidelines of Australian Commission on Safety that informs about the importance of providing evidence and consolidated standards for critical thinking in order to make the strategic implementation more efficient (nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2018).

Additionally the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards (NSQHS) has indicated various factors such as advisories, adequate resources, patient information, fact sheet for documentation and effective monitoring tool that could enhance the ability of the nurse to analyze nursing practice with critical thinking (safetyandquality.gov.au, 2018). Appropriate implementation of such guidelines would help the nurses to apply wisdom and make holistic decisions to provide quality service.

Engaging in Therapeutic and Professional Relationships

Therapeutic relationship is defined as the relationship between the health professionals and the patients that develops with mutual respect, hope, faith and self-sensitivity while considering the spiritual, cultural, emotional and physical requirements of the patients through adequate nursing skills and knowledge (Haydon et al., 2015). It is the responsibilities of the nurses depict and maintain the boundaries while establishing therapeutic relationship with the patients.

On the other hand it is required to maintain the professional behaviors such as provide respects to other health professionals, communicate effectively and remain in the professional boundaries to access adequate collaboration and establish effective professional relationship with colleagues (Pazargadi et al., 2015). It helps to access inter professional practice and improve own practice and service quality through effective collaboration (Haydon et al., 2015).

According to the NMBA standard of nursing practice could be improved with engaging purposefully in the therapeutic and professional relationships (nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2018). Such relationship includes shared responsibilities as the function of mutual respect and trust. The guidelines demonstrate that it is important to establish sustainable relationships by communicating in a respectful way which considers the beliefs, values, dignity and culture of individual while maintaining the professional boundaries (nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2018). Pazargadi et al., (2015) has reflected that supporting the people to access adequate resources and advocate for their needs while considering the legal capacity and autonomy of individual could facilitate the establishment of effective therapeutic and professional relationships.

Another important aspect of NMBA standard 2 is to participate in collaborative practice. In this regards it is essential to share knowledge and practice in order to support patient centered care. Further, the NMBA guidelines have indicated that improved health outcomes could be achieved through the application of referrals, consultation, coordination, supervision and delegation in nursing practice (nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2018). Utilizing such guidelines could help to encourage the patient in care process to facilitate the recovery and access adequate coordination of other health professionals to achieve positive health outcomes in nursing practice.

Remarks on the Experiences

I have got the opportunity to observe practical experience during my practice session in undergraduate nursing course. During this practical experience I have observed that clinical practice pursues the above mentioned standards and other standards of NMBA as well. Here I acquire the impending chance to reflect on the application of such nursing standards in actual practice. I have noticed that while working as a practice nurse majority of the NMBA standards occur naturally and the professionals do not required referring the guidelines provided by the NMBA during the course of action in nursing practice. However, in order to engraft the standards in nursing practice it is required having frugality and experience for the health professionals. Thus, I would like tp gather experience and knowledge regarding the standards of practice to achieve expected health outcomes during my clinical practice.

In conclusion, it can be demonstrated that, reflective practice helps to identify the mistakes and introduce effective strategies to address them and improve their skills. Through the reflection on the above explained standards I have learned that it is important to understand the nursing ideas, concepts, contents and theories to apply the NMBA standards in nursing practice. Utilization of such standards could help to conduct the task without interruption and achieve desired health outcomes.

References

Christmals, C. D., & Gross, J. J. (2017). An integrative literature review framework for postgraduate nursing research reviews. European Journal of Research in Medical Sciences Vol, 5(1).

Dubé, V., & Ducharme, F. (2015). Nursing reflective practice: An empirical literature review. Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, 5(7), 91.

Goulet, M. H., Larue, C., & Alderson, M. (2016, April). Reflective practice: A comparative dimensional analysis of the concept in nursing and education studies. In Nursing forum 51(2), pp. 139-150.

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, 50(2-3), 214-226.

nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au (2018). Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. Professional codes and guidelines, including “Code of conduct for nurses” and “Registered nurse standards for practice”. Retrieved from https://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/Codes-Guidelines-Statements.aspx

Pazargadi, M., Fereidooni Moghadam, M., Fallahi Khoshknab, M., Alijani Renani, H., & Molazem, Z. (2015). The therapeutic relationship in the shadow: Nurses’ experiences of barriers to the nurse–patient relationship in the psychiatric ward. Issues in mental health nursing, 36(7), 551-557.

Pitt, V., Powis, D., Levett-Jones, T., & Hunter, S. (2015). The influence of critical thinking skills on performance and progression in a pre-registration nursing program. Nurse education today, 35(1), 125-131.

Rubenfeld, M. G., & Scheffer, B. (2014). Critical thinking tactics for nurses. Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.

safetyandquality.gov.au (2018). Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Retrieved from https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/ 

Zuriguel Pérez, E., Lluch Canut, M. T., Falco Pegueroles, A., Puig Llobet, M., Moreno Arroyo, C., & Roldan Merino, J. (2015). Critical thinking in nursing: Scoping review of the literature. International journal of nursing practice, 21(6), 820-830.