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Professional Values and Professional BehaviorsAshley JohnsonNUR 3825University of FloridaProfessional Values and Professional BehaviorsNurses often face challenging obstacles and situations in which they must think on their feet and create an optimal environment for the patient and the patient’s family. In the trialing times, such as when a patient feels hopeless because of his disease or the family nags about the doctor’s lack of empathy or comprehensible explanation, the nurse becomes the mediator and advocate between the client and the health care provider. Therefore, the nurse should encompass certain quality traits that become necessary when interacting with patients, their families, and the health care providers. Nurses need to behave in a manner that promotes caring and creates a safe environment for the patients they will work with. Characteristics that influence such behavior include compassion, respect, and responsibility. Each characteristic enables the nurse to work effectively and communicate well on both sides of the spectrum, in regards to the patient and the health care team.Nurses constantly interact with their patients, whether they see the patient once per month or every four hours. The bond nurses create with their patients has an abundance of compassion. Davison and Williams (2009) state the following:Compassion, or caring can be viewed as “nursing’s most precious asset” (Schantz, 2007), a fundamental element of nursing care (Dietze and Orb, 2000), and as one of the strengths of the profession. According to Torjuul et al (2007), it involves being close to patients and seeing their situation as more than a medical scenario and routine procedures. The politician’s notion of compassion, according to Alan Johnson, features smiles and empathetic care (Carvel, 2008).Nurses empathize with the patient’s feelings and the family’s concerns. Nurses receive the doctor’s orders and perform the tasks with gentleness. Nurses continually work with the client, such as the patient or the family, as the focus and keep the client as the focus for the duration of the relationship. In my clinical experience, I have worked alongside a patient care assistant (PCA). The PCA completes some invasive procedures, like giving bed baths and cleaning incontinent patients, which require compassion towards the patient’s needs and gentleness in the PCA’s touch. During one of my clinical experiences, the PCA had said she needed to clean an incontinent patient. My partner and I had followed the PCA to help with this patient. The patient had been an elderly woman, who had sensitive skin and sacral areas succumbing to increased pressure creating ulcers. She had been in pain, so the situation required compassion and empathy for the patient’s pain status, but also with touching and cleaning the patient. Therefore, as I had proceeded to help the PCA with the incontinent patient, I had to use a compassionate approach to ensure the patient experienced minimal discomfort. Thus, the situation has been one of the more intense situations I felt that required different types of compassion and gentleness. Compassion relates to the AACN’s (2008) professional value altruism. (p. 27) According to the AACN (2008), altruism refers to the “concern for the welfare and wellbeing of others.” (p. 27) Altruism mirrors the advocate role of the nurse for the patient’s wellness and the mediator role on behalf of the health care team. Shaw and Degazon (2008) states, “They encouraged students to be supportive of, and caring for each other, faculty, and staff, and to develop positive, generous collegial relationships.” (p. 46) A nurse embodies altruism when she takes the doctor’s orders and performs them accurately, all the while keeping in mind the concerns of the patient, ensuring the doctor’s orders, nor her actions, interfere with the patient’s health, life, or culture. Compassion reflects the gentle approach of altruism in how the nurse interacts with the patient or the patient’s family when implementing the doctor’s instructions. So, compassion generally reflects the nurse’s interaction with the patient; whereas, altruism provides support to the different sides of relationship. One key characteristic of the nursing profession is respect. Nurses have committed to showing respect to the health care professionals and the clients. Showing respect to the health care team includes being attentive of the doctor’s orders, the physical therapist’s appointments, and the other nurses’ thoughts in regards to the optimal care for the patient. Respect towards the client involves listening to concerns, empathizing to patient’s feelings, and showing consideration to the client’s, patient or family, suggestions. From “Five Behaviors that Show Respect,” Ulrich, Breugger, and Lefton (2009) discusses that the five behaviors that can show respect in the nursing profession both to the health care team and the patient include correctly hearing what someone says, recognizing wise thoughts and accomplishments, empathizing with a patients feelings, showing thoughtfulness towards colleagues, and lastly, being dutiful and accountable.Regarding my clinical experience, respect has become a characteristic I pay more attention to. I have the personality of accomplishing tasks by myself, which does not exist in the focus of health care. I have gained respect for those older than me with more experience. Eventually, I will become a nurse working under an elder nurse who will coach me until I become an experienced nurse. I have been learning such respect from working alongside the PCA each week with guidance in how to perform different tasks effectively. When I had first started doing ACCU Checks, I had a slight form of anxiety about performing the job correctly. However, the PCA had performed this particular task almost every day, so I had decided to trust and respect her position of authority in teaching me how to properly perform the ACCU Check. In doing so, I had ended with correctly performing the ACCU Check, resolving my anxiety and gaining more respect and trust for those in higher authority. Respect reflects the AACN’s (2008) proficient value human dignity. (p.27) Human dignity defines the nurse’s ability to esteem the patient and her colleagues, placing appreciation of worth and value on the person (AACN, 2008, p. 27). Respect is an aspect of human dignity; without respect, a nurse cannot value the worth of a person. Therefore, she neglects the patient’s or health care provider’s values, causing the person to feel ignored. When a patient begins to feel ignored, they are more likely to become unresponsive to treatment or nursing intervention. When a health care team member feels ignored, the team starts to disintegrate; and nothing happens. Nevertheless, a nurse who chooses to respect those around her will notice a compliment in respect from the receiving end. Concerning the patient, human dignity becomes very important when the patient’s values and beliefs contradict the beliefs and preferable treatment methods of the nurse and health care providers. Emily Wilken writes of her nursing experience in African Rice Heart (2011). She had worked in a hospital in Chad, Africa with no prior clinical experience; however, over there, she had the status of an R.N. in America because of Chad’s lack of health care (Wilkens, 2011). In one article, “The Right Thing Might be the Wrong Thing,” Wilkens discusses her encounter with a father who had brought his sick daughter to the hospital; the only preventable treatment to save the daughter had to be a blood transfusion, which the father had been the perfect match (2011). In response to the father’s denial to give the blood transfusion, Emily had lashed out at the father and had decided that she would volunteer to give blood—she had the same blood type—but the supervisor would not let her. Then the supervisor had responded, “No. This is the family’s responsibility. If people learn that they can be irresponsible and someone else will pick up their responsibility for their child, everyone will do this” (Wilkens, 2011, p. 102). Wilkens had not necessarily understood why the father could deny helping his child, but she had learned from the experience that she had to respect the father’s decision, which in turn respected the client’s cultural beliefs. Responsibility has a significant role in the nursing profession. Nurses have to perform numerous roles, such as honoring a patient’s values, while simultaneously executing the doctor’s orders to provide the best care. The nurse has a responsibility, or duty, to both the doctor and the patient. Responsibility in the nursing profession plays a part in patient’s interests, advocacy, values and morals, community education, and ethical issues (Reid, 2013). Nurses should have the patient’s interests at the utmost concern, advocating on behalf of the patient to the doctor, but should inform the patient what the doctor and health care team believes to be the best care and stay actively involved in any discussion regarding the patient. All these roles require the nurse to be responsible, implementing necessary tasks to provide the best health care possible. In my personal clinical experience, I have learned an individual cannot become a nurse unless she has responsibility. Throughout the first few weeks, I had worked beside the PCA, taking vital signs, calculating intake and output, and checking glucose levels. However, the past weeks the PCA had given my partner and I the responsibility to take the vital signs, intake and output, and glucose levels and document all the values into EPIC by ourselves. I definitely had some nervousness in me about performing such tasks mentioned previously. However, my clinical leader and the PCA had made certain we knew what we had to do. Performing the correct tasks and checking the vital signs accurately required the responsibility that my partner and I would report anything abnormal on behalf of the patient’s safety and to benefit the future treatment the doctor might advise. AACN’s (2008) professional value integrity compares to responsibility. (p.27) Integrity, as described by the AACN (2008), incorporates “an appropriate code of ethics and accepted standards of practice” into the nursing profession. Integrity requires responsibility on the nurses’ behalf when adhering to the code of ethics and standards established by the hospital. When providing care to the patients, nurses need to have integrity, ensuring the patients receive “care based on an ethical framework” (AACN, 2008). In order for patients to receive effective, ethical care, nurses have to make various decisions, especially if the patient has cultural values or beliefs that could conflict with the care. Shaw and Degazon (2008) write the following: A film, “Code Gray” (1983), described scenarios from varied clinical settings that illustrated the complexity of the decision-making processes in which nursing professionals engage when they uphold the high standards of professional integrity. Actual nursing care dilemmas were presented and explored from multiple perspectives, including cultural and individual values (p. 48). The cultural challenges—any type of challenge that might arise—nurses might encounter can cause the nurse to become the advocate for their patient, keeping the patient’s interests first in mind and having to use judgment and integrity in providing the best ethical care the health care team can.Of all the professional values provided by the AACN (2008), I believe that autonomy is the most challenged value by the current nursing practices today. Autonomy provides the patient with the ability to make decisions about his own health care; it can be challenged in various situations. The value autonomy involves keeping the patient’s interests at mind, but providing ethical care, which could possible interfere with the beliefs of patient or family. For example, in “Why Don’t You Accept Blood Transfusions?” (2013), Jehovah’s Witness, a religion associated with Christianity, believe in avoiding blood transfusions, which can become questionable if a blood transfusion can save a 5-year-old girl’s life. Furthermore, another example could be a woman who has diabetes might choose not to take her medications. As a nurse, one could find out she does not have the money or the transportation to retrieve her medication. Then the nurse has the duty to help the woman find resources to be able to receive her medication and to let the doctor know of the woman’s situation. Autonomy can affect the nurse’s ability to provide the optimal patient-focused care when the patient’s decisions interfere with the treatment plans. Values in the nursing world become important when providing the patient and family with the best care, but also working alongside the other health care team members. Some values like compassion, respect, and responsibility play different roles in the nursing profession. Each value a nurse embodies can become challenged by the patient or the doctor. The nurse develops into the advocate for the patient but the mediator for the doctor, communicating the needs for the each side of the equation. Without certain values and characteristics, nurses cannot work effectively to benefit the care of the patient or to complete the tasks ordered by the doctor. ReferencesAACN. (2008 October 20). The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice. American Association of Colleges of Nursing, p. 27-28. Retrieved from , N. & Williams, K. (2009 September 14). Compassion in Nursing 1: Defining, Identifying, and Measuring this Essential Quality. . Retrieved from , S. (2013). What is Professional Responsibility in Nursing?. Chron. Retrieved from , H. K. & Degazon, C. (2008). Integrating the Core Professional Values of Nursing: A Profession, Not Just a Career. Retrieved from , B., Breugger, R., & Lefton, C. (2009). Five Behaviors that Show Respect. Navigate Nursing: Where Every Nurses is a Leader. Retrieved from , E. S. (2011). The Right Thing Might be the Wrong Thing. African Rice Heart: A Young Woman’s Journal to Radical Service (p. 102). Nampa, Idaho: Pacific Press Publishing Assoication.(2013). Why Don’t You Accept Blood Transfusions?. Jehovah’s Witness. Retrieved from ................
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