Undoubtedly, nursing is one of the most essential, irreplaceable, stressful, and complicated professions in the modern world. Every day, nurses help save hundreds of lives, provide psychological support and care for patients and families, improve their skills, and train other employees. This work brings tangible satisfaction, but also requires tremendous effort, proper preparation, and continuous improvement of knowledge and attainments. The purpose of this essay is to discuss the skills and behaviors that are envisioned for successful nursing and also to rate my results based on the completed skills inventory assessment.
To start with, providing optimal and high-quality patient care in the changing conditions of the health care system is not an easy task. It depends on the ability of an organization to train and develop staff, to give opportunities and incentives for professional improvement (West, Smithgall, Rosler, & Winn, 2016). The skills assessment was a useful and valuable experience for me, and it made my personal and professional accountability better. During the practice, I have realized that it is very crucial to follow nursing standards and scopes as it helps avoid some mistakes. Furthermore, continuing education, annual self-assessment, and achieving certification in the appropriate field are the steps that I perform for my personal growth. In this area, it would be useful for me to pay more attention to professional association involvement that facilitates networking and nursing development.
In the nursing profession, essential quality is the ability to plan time for assignments and patient care, knowing the role and position in this work, as well as the ability to predict the professional future. With numerous barriers to success in the clinical setting, psychosocial, educational, and personal experiences determine the level at which nursing students begin the journey toward the mastery of clinical skills (Van Horn & Christman, 2017). In my practice, I taught to estimate the present job requirements and compare them to the current level of preparation. It helps a lot in finding out where I want to go in my nursing career in the future, and what the needs of health care are.
An important skill of any nurse is the ability to be a leader and manage people. According to West et al. (2016), successful nurse leaders must be responsive, demonstrate flexibility, apply the concepts of leadership effectiveness, and know how to make personal connections. Although I am a team player, it took a lot of time and effort to develop my leadership skills and individual strengths. There are many things to improve – I need to be better in managing councils that promote leadership. Also, it is useful to apply the action learning technique and reflective practice, which can help solve problems and personally think out solutions. Nurses are usually confident and initiative in their work and the care of their patients. However, they are accountable for the professional decisions they make.
Reflective practice plays a crucial role in my professional experience as it teaches us how to carry out challenging tasks which nurses meet every day. Thinking about how I handled some duties helps identify mistakes and fix them because the learning we achieve through reflexive strategies is different from the theory and acquired skills. The maximum value of professionalism and leadership is holding the truth and multiple perspectives without judgment, as it is necessary to make the right decisions and manage people. During my practice, I tried to discover the potential in myself and others, and learn to create and organize a constant state for development. Although reflection is challenging, it brings up a person intellectually and emotionally and creates a balance necessary for further growth and development.
The rating showed that there are a lot of things I can work on to improve my nursing skills. First of all, it is following all the rules and standards of nursing, having a non-judgmental approach, being positive and empathic with my patients. I want to be a professional in my job, so I need to go out of my comfort zone and reach the full potential. In case of a change in the workplace, I can use my leadership skill set to advocate for it through maintaining an environment of fairness and capitalizing on differences to reach high effectiveness among workgroups. One of my personal goals for leadership growth is continuing education and getting new experience. To implement it, I am going to become a member of an appropriate professional association as it can facilitate networking and nursing development.
To sum up, I think that I had carried out the nursing practice efficiently and followed all the necessary standards. I managed to improve my professional and ethical qualities, gained valuable experience in providing medical care, and also learned to make difficult decisions. This reflection helped me identify my strengths and weaknesses in the assessment and understand how I can improve my leadership skills soon. This practice was also an excellent platform to reflect upon my career and plan further education and development.
References
Van Horn, E., & Christman, J. (2017). Assessment of nursing student confidence using the clinical skills self-efficacy scale. Nursing Education Perspectives, 38(6), 344-346.
West, M., Smithgall, L., Rosler, G., & Winn, E. (2016). Evaluation of a nurse leadership development programme. Nursing Management-UK, 22(10), 26-31.