What Does It Mean to Be a Nurse?
Nursing is a profession that involves taking care of people who suffer from various problems. Nurses have a wide field for practice, working with patients of different ages, and providing assistance to attending medical doctors and surgeons. Contrary to the common opinion that nurses can only be the helpers to the doctor, they can work individually. What is more, some of them, such as nurse practitioners, are given the right to examine the patients in order to make a diagnosis and prescribe the necessary medicinal drugs. During their shift, nurses perform a variety of activities. For example, they develop individual plans of care for the patients, provide assistance to attending medical doctors in order to increase the effectiveness of the treatment, and regularly visit the patients to inquire about their health.
Nurses are extremely important as professionals because they often act as intermediaries between attending medical doctors and patients. Due to the critical part that nurses play in medical monitoring support, their work is supposed to measure up to exacting standards. Thus, a professional in nursing should be aware of the theoretical foundation of this field of science and possess developed skills of reducing the theory to nursing practice. Nevertheless, there is an opinion that nursing education programs often lack reference to practice, and this is why there is a misbalance between these two aspects of the professional development of a nurse (Hatlevik, 2012, p. 868). According to the people who adhere to this opinion, nowadays, there is a significant gap between the education and practice of the nurses, and it has a negative influence on the quality of medical care.
Nursing Education
Nursing education is considered to be extremely important; it involves various training that is to prepare future nurses for the peculiarities of the work that they will have to perform. The courses that are available in many countries can provide future specialists with knowledge on both general nursing or more specific fields of this science. There are many nursing specialties that students are allowed to choose from, but all the students need to know how to put theory into practice in order to render a proper assistance to the patients. Education programs for future nurses are supposed to touch upon both theory and practice of nursing.
Nevertheless, in many cases students feel that their teachers do not pay enough attention to explaining them how to cope with problems that appear during their nursing practice. In fact, it is not an overstatement to say that some nursing instructors focus their attention on theoretical foundations of the nursing science. To be honest, this problem is urgent not only for the field of nursing. With the start of their professional career, many students of different study fields find out that they have no idea now to solve some challenging tasks that have not been discussed during their education period. Besides having knowledge on taking care after the patients, any professional nurse should know how to control the anxiety and act effectively in some extreme cases that may occur during the working hours. In support of modern nursing education system, the theories of nursing practice are used during the education (Henderson, Cooke, Creedy, & Walker, 2012, p. 299). At the same time, they are not likely to be paid enough attention to; the problems that the theory touches upon are not always the same to the ones that occur during the practice, and students feel that they are going to be unable to work out the problems as they come up.
Nursing Practice
Performing their nursing practice, professional nurses are expected to apply their theoretical knowledge to solve different problems. The successful work of a nurse is likely to be a result of a proper education. Unfortunately, many of those who start working in this field of activity, lack knowledge on practical issues that occur almost every day. During the education process, students should have enough hours of clinical experience as it acts as a basis of their future success. In fact, such a practice is aimed at teaching the students to use all their mental abilities and critical reasoning skills in order to solve the problems in a short period of time.
Regrettably, nursing instructors have to provide their students with such an enormous amount of information that it becomes easier to test only students’ theoretical knowledge. As for the skills of putting the theory into practice, the students are often believed to be intelligent enough to develop it without their instructors’ assistance. Such a conception of teaching future nurses is likely to prevent students from becoming the specialists who possess something more than just factological knowledge. To continue, many students believe that clinical practice does not help them to develop their skills at problem solving (Khodaei, Mansourain, Ganjei, & Asgari, 2016, p.50). Thus, it is believed to increase their anxiety level instead of teaching them how to cope with the anxiety and the stress that may take place during the work. Such an unreadiness to assess the situation and take decisions very fast may result in a lack of self-confidence of a future nurse.
Is There a Gap?
Having taken into consideration the contradiction between theoretical and practical knowledge, we may state that there is a certain gap between nursing education and nursing practice. This gap exists due to the numerous reasons. First of all, during their practical training, future specialists are not always given a demo of common issues that occur during the real nursing work. What is more, sometimes the lack of professionalism among nursing students is caused by their instructors’ poor knowledge of some aspects of modern clinical practice (Adjani & Moez, 2012, p.3928). Besides, the reason of the gap between theory and practice is likely to be connected to a lack of research in the field. Thus, modern researchers should pay more attention to nursing instruction methods and their effectiveness.
Pondering this question, we should not forget that none of these two components (theory and practice) can be regarded as more important for the future work of a student than the other. Instead, only those nurses who are prepared both theoretically and practically, encourage the creation of positive image that represents a nurse as a real specialist, and not just the helper of attending medical doctor (Heydari, Soudmand, Hajiabadi, Armat, & Rad, 2014, p. 72). Due to this gap between practice and education, many nursing students notice that the requirements of their teachers of theoretical and practical disciplines may deeply vary or even contradict one another. This fact often makes them lose the concept of a professional nurse and start receiving their instructors’ statements with incredulity. In conclusion, to prevent other negative consequences of the issue, specialists in the field should pay more attention to modern approaches to nursing education.
References
Ajani, K., & Moez, S. (2012). Gap between knowledge and practice in nursing. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 15(1), 3927-3931.
Hatlevik, I. K. (2012). The theory-practice relationship: Reflective skills and theoretical knowledge as key factors in bridging the gap between theory and practice in initial nursing education. Journal of advanced nursing, 68(4), 868-877.
Henderson, A., Cooke, M., Creedy, D. K., & Walker, R. (2012). Nursing students’ perceptions of learning in practice environments: A review. Nurse Education Today, 32(3), 299-302.
Heydari, A., Soudmand, P., Hajiabadi, F., Armat, M., & Rad, M. (2014). The causes and solutions of the theory and practice gap from nursing education view point: A review article. Journal of Medical Education Development, 7(14), 72-85.
Khodaei, A., Mansourain, M., Ganjei, S., & Asgari, H. (2016). Strategies for decreasing gap between theory & clinical performance from the viewpoints of nursing students in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. Research in Medical Education, 8(2), 49-59.