Professional Nursing Role
Nurses play important professional roles in the nursing profession. One of the most significant functions that I have a huge interest in is that of a caregiver. I have always wanted to attend to sick people and aid them in their journey to full recovery. However, this is only one role that nurses are entrusted with in various healthcare institutions. Doctors cater for the diagnosis and treatment so they assign nurses with the role of ensuring and monitoring the patients, as they provide the healthcare consumers with the medication and other services that contribute to their recuperation. Therefore, a caregiver is a professional nurse who plays an integral part in the recovery of a patient.
The caregiving role of a nurse has been exercised for decades. There have always been people attending to the sick even before formal education was introduced. Moreover, these individuals took care of patients, examined their wounds, and fed them. Most of those allocated to this task were women. The same people served in the hospitals at the time. Nevertheless, these medical institutions did not have the required facilities, which in most cases meant that the nurses worked with patients while waiting for their dying moments. Florence Nightingale would be the first person to revolutionize the nursing profession by establishing standards that ensured hygiene, which reduced infection rates. Hence, this was a key part of the role of caregivers because it improved their ability to offer better services and save human lives. Furthermore, Nightingale opened the first nursing training school, which helped introduce formal training for nursing (Blais & Hayes, 2015). Since then, formal education provided to nurses has improved significantly since technology and knowledge continued to advance. As a result, nurses provide specialty care to people all over the world; therefore, one of the most important roles they play is a caregiver.
A person should have a degree in nursing to become registered as a nurse. Nurses are trained to offer medical services to patients during their studies. Thus, one should have nursing qualifications to become a professional in the field. Moreover, nurses gain experience in providing care to patients during their diploma studies. Consequently, this makes a degree in nursing a prerequisite for caregivers. A nurse plays a crucial role as a caregiver to patients. Some of the responsibilities of the latter include providing holistic care. It implies feeding the sick, taking care of their dressing, and expressing emotional and spiritual support. Additionally, the caregiver must ensure that patients are aware of what is happening to them in terms of treatment and the recovery process (Rogowski et al., 2015). Hence, this is very important because a nurse must address the needs of the patient when providing care and this encompasses providing supplying patients and their families with the necessary information.
The role of the caregiver is dependent on the state of the sick and other professionals involved in the treatment. The kind of services the nurse provides to the patient is always subject to what the patient wants and how it influences the doctor’s diagnosis. If medical practitioners and other experts engaged in the treatment of patients recommend a certain type of care, the nurse will follow the guidelines. Therefore, nurses must contact the doctor and others involved in the treatment as well as the patient in order to develop the best plan for the patient’s recovery. Thus, this makes their role very dependent which contributes to their status as an integral part of the treatment.
The nursing role has always been very significant because physicians rely on caregivers to facilitate the recuperation of the patient. Therefore, there are always various opportunities for the caregiver to advance in order to offer better services. The latter can acquire counseling skills to ensure that they counsel their patients as healthcare providers offer care to them. Hence, this is essential because some individuals especially those suffering from terminal diseases require a lot of counselling to give them hope that they still have the whole life ahead of them. The caregiver can also advance and become a nursing professional development specialist. Thus, this is a role that makes nurses train and aids them to become better in their profession. The aforementioned factors are very substantial in the growth and development of the profession. The caregiver can advance and take this role to help their colleagues acquire the necessary competencies that will make them better specialists (Alexander, 2015). Therefore, this is a key area of advancement because it puts the caregiver in a position where they can identify new demands and challenges as well as develop the required competencies to deal with them. They are also useful to introduce new regulations to overcome emerging challenges that healthcare providers encounter.
In conclusion, the role of a caregiver is professional and requires a trained person to offer medical services to patients. It is one of the most important functions in the treatment of the sick, which to a great extent, determines how smooth the recovery process is. A nurse must be experienced to offer this kind of service because it demands identifying the kind of care a patient needs and then providing it in the best and the most efficient way. Therefore, it is a primary role that every nurse is trained to provide to patients. Consequently, caregivers are professional nurses who offer the main medical services to patients.