The Role Of Registered Nurses In Nursing

Within Alberta’s healthcare system, teams of qualified individuals work together to provide exceptional care to everyday people. The employees must be professional and accountable to be adequate members of the healthcare team. Each member is important and should not be taken for granted; for example, the role of a registered nurse can encompass caring for the patients, to being the leader of the healthcare team. Failure to fulfill the responsibilities within the RN position may result in a poor care plan established for the patients. The College and Association of Registered Nurses of Alberta (2013) defines self-regulation as being critical standard which needs to be met as a qualified nurse. The nursing career is unpredictable, but through

If a nurse becomes injured, or unable to do his or her job, the team’s effectiveness and efficiency is hindered. Every nurse will find personal limitations pertaining to both their mental and physical ability, but this does not inhibit them from providing necessary care for their client. After attaining a Bachelor of Nursing Degree, for example, many nurses are still incapable of performing a full lift transfer alone. Nursing is a collaborative career, so every nurse should feel comfortable asking a fellow colleague for assistance. CARNA (2013) states, “the nurse practices within their own level of competence” (p.19, indicator 5.5); this means not taking on a job too big for one person. A male nurse may be more capable of supporting a larger adult client than a petite female nurse; he is not necessarily more qualified. The female nurse has simply found her other limitation. As long as the petite nurse is able to recognize this, she could ask for help. Two nurses could then proficiently transfer almost any client. It is through the use of teamwork that every tasks are done at a higher quality, in a shorter period of time. Among the team there will be enough hands for physically demanding jobs, and enough minds to answer any problem or question that may arise. A nurse will portray a higher level of professionalism by asking for

In a nursing student’s first year of training, a large portion of the training is on communication. The majority of the information pertains to the nurse/client communication, but it is also necessary between the nurse and the team. These communication skills then add onto Swanson’s (1991) theory of caring: knowing, “being with,” “doing for,” enabling, and maintaining belief; which then adds onto basic nursing skills such as taking vital signs and documenting. So while a nurses contribute those attribute to the healthcare team, physicians add their knowledge, and psychologists add their findings. The information is then viewed as a whole. A study on diabetes by Pittenger et al. (2013) examined the importance of this type of collaboration. Pharmacists and nurses from different schools used social media to create an interprofessional team, capable of working together on a diabetes experience. Diabetes is a very broad diagnosis, with many branches and specifics types; to diagnose, educate, and treat diabetes, many different health professionals are needed. So in the study the students noticed, to address the complex nature of diabetes with limited face-to-face interaction between team members, everyone must optimize their skills during group work to solve “medical homelessness.” The study concluded that students enjoyed this method of learning