Professionalism in Nursing: Values, Theories, and Personal Reflection

Running head: PROFESSIONALISM IN NURSING 1
Professionalism in Nursing
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PROFESSIONALISM IN NUSRSING 2
Introduction
Being a nurse can never be defined as just a career or basically as a job. Nursing requires
some non-clinical skills such as compassion, respect and a concern for the dignity of human
person. Nursing as a profession calls for constant dedication to the needs of the patient and the
society at large (Dent, & Tye, 2018). Professional nursing has been illustrated as adhering to the
code: standards of conduct, performance, and ethics for nurses and midwives (El-
Saharty, Ahmed, Ahsan, Barroy, El-Saharty, & Sparkes, (2015). This requires clinical skills such as
beneficence, non-maleficence, justice fidelity and altruism. This has been seen as the foundation
of good nursing practices and better standards of health to the community. This paper focuses on
professionalism in nursing, various theories and models of being a professional nurse and a
personal reflection on my progress as a nurse.
Critical analysis
Professional nursing has guiding values which enhance better provision nursing services.
These values include having respect for human dignity, integrity, altruism, and justice. Human
dignity entails respect for human rights. The dignity of the human person is the doctrine that
encourages respect for human life. Life is sacred and human dignity can never be earned nor be
taken from somebody. Human dignity, therefore, entails treating people basically the same
regardless of who they are and their political social status. When a nurse has respect for the
dignity of the human person, they are patient-centered. Other clinical skills include privacy and
confidentiality. A nurse should not disclose a patient information to an authorized person.
Integrity is also an important skill in the nursing profession. Carpenter, (2018) argues that
this gives a patient an assurance to explain themselves to the nurse for the better administering of
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services. In Collins, & Edelman, (2015) emphasizes on honesty, being accountable and also
taking responsibility for every action they take.
Altruism and justice are also professional values in nursing posits Tanaka, Taketomi,
Yonemitsu, & Kawamoto, (2016). Altruism entails being compassionate or having empathy and
not being selfish towards assisting and helping others too. Justice as a value in nursing
professionalism is described as being able to give equal treatment to everyone, fairly distributing
the available resources and practice of using action towards achieving social and political
stability amongst all.
There are both positive and negative implications of the clinical and non-clinical skills, it
may impact positively and negatively in their work. One of the very positive effects is that
developing these skills improves competence and enables nurses to gain resilience in their care
delivery. Patterson, DeBaryshe, & Ramsey, (2017) argues that lack of these skills may make a
nurse to be incompetent in their work and fail to deliver to the set standards of practice.
Discussion
There are several theories and models that can be used to examine professionalism in
nursing. These theories observe areas of competency in nursing that nurses should work on to
improve their expertise. Some of these models include the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition and
Benner’s 5 stages of clinical competence. Patricia Benner, a doctor and a lecturer came up with 5
stages of clinical competence. These stages include novice, advanced beginner, competent,
proficient and finally expert (Thomas, & Kellgren, 2017). In the first stage which is the novice
stage, a nurse or a midwife has very little experience and exposure to the outside world. He or
she is unable to effectively communicate and to convert the learned skills into practice. The
nurse also lacks confidence and often gets stuck in small duties for longer hours.
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