Nursing is a multifaceted profession that requires commitment and constant personal development from anyone who makes the decision to follow this professional path. Education is the first step toward excellence in the nursing field. Modern educational systems draw on liberal education concepts that highlight the empowerment of individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills. Liberal education does not focus strictly on refining nursing students’ hard skills. It also helps them to develop their set of values, pay more attention to ethics, and become more civically engaged.
These faculties are needed for resolving the practice issues that every nurse inevitably encounters in his or her practice. In the workplace, nurses face quite a lot of challenges some of which stem from personal shortcomings while others are rooted in the faults of the existing healthcare system. Individually, nurses may experience a lack of motivation and expertise; they may fail to prioritize accountability and ownership and withdraw from making critical decisions. Organizational factors such as overstaffing, long working hours, lack of resources, and workplace violence are also still persistent in the nursing field.
One of the challenges of nursing is providing care for diverse populations. In this case, a nurse needs to take into account social and cultural factors when developing a treatment plan. For instance, in the United States, the African-American population is considered to be at high risk for diseases such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. As explained by Noonan, Velasco-Mondragon, and Wagner (2016) historically, African-Americans had poor access to public services. Today, those who are especially underprivileged lack resources to provide themselves with healthy nutrition and indulge in substance use for relief.
The need to consider the patient’s situation, on the whole, has grown into the concept of holistic care. Holistic care sees beyond the physical manifestations of disease and focuses on the physical, emotional, social, economic, and spiritual needs of the patient. For instance, a person might be abusing substances because of an unresolved psychiatric problem, in which case, it is critical to address the root cause. Because holistic care looks at disease from different perspectives, it often requires the group of the effort of a multidisciplinary team of specialists. Practices such as interprofessional rounding bring together specialists in different subfields of medicine to understand the full picture of a complicated case.
In recent years, the nursing leadership discourse has changed to include bedside nurses that do not hold official management positions. The nursing practice encompasses a wide range of situations that require leadership qualities from all parties involved. Leadership and collaborative care can improve the quality of medical services for patients who suffer from opioid addiction. Abusing opioids can be deadly, which is why such an issue requires comprehensive care that includes both medication-assisted treatment and psychotherapy. The two methods require the involvement of a general practitioner, a specialist in addiction, and a psychotherapist. While the first two work on relieving the physical symptoms and “reprogramming the body,” the latter seeks psychological issues that fuel addiction.
An example of a situation where leadership and collaboration benefit patient safety is hospital-acquired infection prevention. While being hospitalized, patients are at risk of developing yet another condition such as hospital-acquired pneumonia. A multidisciplinary team can assess the risk factors for this disease such as age, chronic conditions, smoking, and others, and take measures. Nurses can guide the process by communicating with a patient and their families and studying their medical history.
Reference
Noonan, A. S., Velasco-Mondragon, H. E., & Wagner, F. A. (2016). Improving the health of African Americans in the USA: an overdue opportunity for social justice. Public health reviews, 37(1), 12.