WHAT DOES A NURSE DO?

For non healthcare worker who wish to express opinion on nursing and hospital issues.
Kareen
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WHAT DOES A NURSE DO?

Unread post by Kareen »

Nursing: My Noble Profession

It is very expedient to enlightened the general public and private sectors about what nursing is .This will enable us to appreciate the wide range of services that a professional nurse can offer her clients and the entire world.

WHAT IS NURSING? NURSING
Includes range of specialties and definitions that varies from country to country. Broadly speaking, a nurse is person formally educated, trained, certified and registered to care for the sick, disabled, thereby offering healthful services to the entire community.

Nursing also include other fields of Medicine such as prevention of diseases, maternal and child health, mental health, public health, family health, care of the aged, emergency care, etc.
According to the international council of nurses, "Nursing includes autonomous and collaborative care of individuals of all ages, families, groups, and communities, sick or well and in all settings. It includes the promotion of health,
prevention of illness, care of ill or disabled and dying people. It has to do with health advocacy, promotion of safe environment,research, shaping of health policy, in- patient health system management and health education. These are key roles in nursing.
Some books highlights the duties of a nurse as assisting individuals in performing activities that contributes to health, recovery, or peaceful death, that the patients would perform if they had the strength, will and knowledge required.

WHAT DOES A NURSE DO?
Nurses care for individuals, families and communities, ensuring that they attain, maintain, or recover optimal health and functioning. She also ensures peaceful death when it is inevitable.
Nurses are capable of assessing, planning,
implementing, and evaluating care independently, and in collaboration with other care givers with the use of their care tools,e.g. Nursing Process, NANDA, NIC&NOC, etc.

Nurses are patients advocate, they spent more hours with their patients, caring and coordinating care activities. They are at the center of patient care in the hospitals and the entire community. They use clinical judgement to protect, promote, and optimize health, prevent illness and injuries, alleviate sufferings, and advocate Healthcare for individuals, families, communities and populations.
Florence Nightingale, is the most influential figure in modern nursing and she defined nursing as "the act of utilizing the environment of patient to assist him in his recovery" . This is what we do as nurses, it is not same as what the quacks does in most privately owned cottage hospitals where both the trainers and the trainees have no knowledge of what it takes to be a nurse. Most times they use these set of people for selfish gain to minimise cost and capitalised on people's ignorance of their right and lack of knowledge of who should be called a Nurse.

NURSES MAY PRACTICE IN THE FOLLOWING PLACES:
Clinic, Cruise ships, Hospice facilities, Hospitals, Industries, Long term care facilities, Military facilities, Pharmaceutical companies,
Private homes (personal home care nurse) , Retirement homes, Old people's homes, Schools, Camps, Emergency/Rescue missions, as Consultants in health care, legal or insurance issues concerning health etc.
Nurses can work full or part-time depending on work schedule and time. Nurses can offer different ranges of health care services apart from working in the hospital settings. For management of your aged parents, company staff, schools children, Church/mosque members, bed ridden relation or Convalescence patients, consult a nurse.

NURSES ARE GREAT MANAGERS OF HEALTH
CARE FACILITIES AND EQUIPMENTS, ANY COUNTRY MAKING A HEADWAY AND SOARING HIGH IN HEALTH CARE DELIVERY GET THEIR NURSES INVOLVED IN POLICY MAKING AND ADMINISTRATION. THEIR NURSES ARE WELL REMUNERATED AND
RESPECTED, THEY ALSO HAVE MORE NURSES IN HEALTH CARE FACILITIES THAN DOCTORS AS OPPOSED TO WHAT IS HAPPENING IN SOME REFERRAL HOSPITALS LATELY IN NIGERIA. THEY ALSO TRY TO MAINTAIN THE WHO STANDARD OR AT LEAST GET CLOSE TO IT, WHICH IS "A NURSE TO 4 PATIENTS".
MOST HOSPITALS IN NIGERIA STILL OPERATE AT THE LEVEL OF 1 NURSE TO 30 PATIENTS, SOME HIGHLY PLACED GOVT HOSPITALS OPERATES AT 2 NURSES TO 30PATIENTS.

This is the reason why the rich, politicians, people in authority always have assess to public fund travel abroad to enjoy state of the art care, which are most times rendered by Nigerian Nurses frustrated out of the country,but practicing in America, Europe, Germany, Canada, etc. It is high time we accord nurses the best regards, renumeration and recognition, for they can do better and will serve better if given the opportunity in a conducive environment, nurses are pregnant with great potentials, Nigeria health care managers should allow them to deliver living and progressive ideas. We are in the Era of Change, we need change in the health sector,especially in the way we place nurses in Nigeria.

If President Obama can listen to Nurses in USA, why will President Buhari not listen directly to nurses in Nigeria without committing our agitation and yearnings to the hands of committees who are already biased and have never wished for the progress of nurses?

Nigeria Nurses Need the attention of the Federal Govt and the entire populace.

This is just one of the series to enlighten the public

Thanks for reading.
By Nurse Olufemi Iseyemi Folakemi
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Queenet
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Re: WHAT DOES A NURSE DO?

Unread post by Queenet »

THE NURSE AND THE PUBLIC.
Please read to the end.

Many times I hear so many negative things about nurses;
Nurses are wicked!
Nurses are mean!
Nurses are rude!
Nurses are hard heartened!
Nurses don't show sympathy!
Nurses are evil!
Just to mention a few.
But have you ever sat back and think of who nurses are and who they serve.
Nurses are themselves with different personality make up and temperament.

Then who do nurses serve?
THE PUBLIC...

I know a lot of people will say it's not only nurses that serve the public.
Yes! Bankers, the pastors(priests), business people etc serve the public but the DIFFERENCE IS this.

Unlike other public servants, Nurses serve people who are emotionally and psychologically impaired.
People who are depressed maybe because of chronic or terminal illnesses like cancer.
People who are sad as a result of ill health or unpaid bill or loss of loved ones.
People who are anxious over the outcome of their health conditions.
People who are angry maybe because of loss of privacy and independence associated with hospitalization.
People who are bothered about taking painful injections and swallowing tablets plus or minus other surgical procedures that might cause pain.
People who are in unending pain that can not even be relieved by pain killers.
People who are aggressive and hostile because they haven't been attended to or in cases of emergency or even people who have psychological impairment (psychiatric patients).
People who left home and work place for bed rest as a result of pressure and stress and so many others.

The truth is that anybody who IS SICK IS SAD.
But amidst all these, nurses still try to find ways to put smile in the faces of these aforementioned people.
To give them hope.
Even at the expense of their comfort and tolerance level.
Trying to smile even when they have their own problem that might be weighing them down.

I want us to see nurses as people who can be aggrieved either from work stress of personal issues.
Let's learn to appreciate our NURSES because it's not easy for us at all to deal with these people.
In as much as some has low tolerance level to stress just like any other person who is not a nurse which might bring about antisocial behaviour but we are all humans.

Love nurses!
We care !
I am proud to be a nurse.
#NURSE VIVIAN#
"Changing how the world thinks about nursing".
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