Pros and Cons of Becoming A Nurse

Nursing jobs require a lot of patience and dedication. Registered nurses will be promoting good health, preventing disease, and helping patients through times of illness.

Registered nurses are also required to be detail oriented and to have decent writing skills.

The truth is that if you are considering a career in the nursing field, this should be a decision based on conscious consideration of a variety of factors.

First, you should know that nursing is not for everyone. You must be prepared to work hard.

Nursing is both physically and emotionally challenging and draining.

Actually, with the exception of a few areas, nurses provide care to those in need, almost around the clock 24 hours 7 days a week.

Dividing their schedules into shifts of 8 or 12 hours, nurses work long hours, including nights, weekends and holidays.

Nursing is a profession focused on assisting the people in need of special types of treatments.

 The main goal of a successful nursing service is for the patient to attain and maintain an optimum level of health, while increasing his or her ability to function as independently as possible.

In many cultures, nursing is considered to be something between a hard profession and a meaningful cause.

Focusing on promoting life and improving the quality of living for millions of people around the globe, nursing has evolved from the special care and treatment nuns and military services offered, to a high-quality personalized service in a variety of institutions.

Nurses can be considered as the contemporary community support agents since they are an essential part of every society, conducting health education, counseling and performing practices that aim to relieve patients from pain and suffering.

In short, since nursing involves altruistic behavior; it is a profession that requires the nursing candidate to dedicate time, personal effort and most of all, determination in caring for peoples' well-being.

In almost all countries, nursing practice is defined and governed by law; so for the interested individual to enter the profession, he or she has to successfully complete the necessary education which is regulated by national, state, or territorial boards of nursing.

But, apart from the academic background one has to build, those interested in developing a nursing career have to understand that they might be missing family events, and sometimes have to work late hours.

In some fields nurses have to be on-call twenty-four hours a day.

Not surprisingly, nurses have to deal with unhappy patients and be able to handle the demands of concerned family members.

This can be easily understood, if you can remember the feelings you had the last time you had to stay in bed, even for a simple cold. Unhappy feelings and low self-esteem do not create a very promising environment for anyone.

As nursing is the most diverse of all healthcare professions, nurses have to deal with blood, sputum, feces, urine, vomiting, and ugly smelly wounds.

But nursing is a universal role appearing in some form in every culture; and it is one of the few professions that focus on helping others in a time of need.

Actually, nursing is all about taking care of people; and this is the main concentration during a typical day's work.

As practitioners themselves have stated, "Nursing is about combining the art of caring with the science and technology of today's health care practices."

As one very astute nursing student once stated: "Doctors treat diseases that people have.  Nurses treat people who happen to have a disease"

Nurse Staffing and Quality of Patient Care: Evidence Report

Objectives: To assess how nurse to patient ratios and nurse work hours were associated with patient outcomes in acute care hospitals, factors that influence nurse staffing policies, and nurse staffing strategies that improved patient outcomes.

Data Sources: MEDLINE® (PubMed®), CINAHL, Cochrane Databases, EBSCO research database, BioMed Central, Federal reports, National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators, National Center for Workforce Analysis, American Nurses Association, American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, and Digital Dissertations.

Review Methods: In the absence of randomized controlled trials, observational studies were reviewed to examine the relationship between nurse staffing and outcomes. Meta analysis tested the consistency of the association between nurse staffing and patient outcomes; classes of patient and hospital characteristics were analyzed separately.

Results: Higher registered nurse staffing was associated with less hospital-related mortality, failure to rescue, cardiac arrest, hospital acquired pneumonia, and other adverse events. The effect of increased registered nurse staffing on patients safety was strong and consistent in intensive care units and in surgical patients. Greater registered nurse hours spent on direct patient care were associated with decreased risk of hospital-related death and shorter lengths of stay. Limited evidence suggests that the higher proportion of registered nurses with BSN degrees was associated with lower mortality and failure to rescue. More overtime hours were associated with an increase in hospital related mortality, nosocomial infections, shock, and bloodstream infections. No studies directly examined the factors that influence nurse staffing policy. Few studies addressed the role of agency staff. No studies evaluated the role of internationally educated nurse staffing policies.

Conclusions: Increased nursing staffing in hospitals was associated with lower hospital related mortality, failure to rescue, and other patient outcomes, but the association is not necessarily causal. The effect size varied with the nurse staffing measure, the reduction in relative risk was greater and more consistent across the studies, corresponding to an increased registered nurse to patient ratio but not hours and skill mix. Estimates of the size of the nursing effect must be tempered by provider characteristics including hospital commitment to high quality care not considered in most of the studies. Greater nurse staffing was associated with better outcomes in intensive care units and in surgical patients.

(Read More on Free Ebook at PDF Format)

Download Nurse Staffing and Quality of Patient Care.pdf

The article Nurse Staffing and Quality of Patient Care: Evidence Report is provided by Manual Nurse and Health Guidelines. The article from Medical site is freely distributed for non-commercial purposes to include the source for the article and does not alter the content.