Registered Nurse Scope of Practice: An Australian Overview

This report provides an overview of the scope of practice for registered nurses (RNs) in Australia, examining the professional standards, ethical guidelines, and challenges within the healthcare system. The author, drawing on clinical and placement experiences, highlights that the RN's scope is defined by professional standards and codes of ethics, extending to include skills like medication administration, patient assessment, and care planning. The report emphasizes the importance of professional values such as empathy and compassion, and their alignment with ethical principles. The author's career aspirations to become a BSN psychiatric nurse are also discussed, driven by a desire to address mental health issues and provide specialized care for patients and their families. The report also references various academic sources to support its arguments.

RUNNING HEAD: RN SCOPE OF PRACTICE 1
Registered nurses scope of practice in Australia
Student’s name
Institutional affiliation
Due date

RN SCOPE OF PRACTICE 2
Registered nurses’ scope of practice
According to Birks, Davis, Smithson, & Cant, (2016), the Australian healthcare is
coupled with various emergent challenges such increased costs of care and medicines, the
increasing consumer demand and expectations, change in patterns of disease and epidemiological
burden are just some of the few challenges. The nursing profession is usually considered as one
of the solutions to the emerging problems. The nurses’ ability to respond to these challenges is
however limited due to the regulation surrounding the practice whose scope is not well
understood. This paper focuses on nurses’ scope of practice in the Australian healthcare system.
Based on my clinical and placement experience, I have come to learn that the scope of
nursing of the registered nurse in Australia is not defined by the challenges or the consumer
expectations but by the professional standards of practice. To a greater extent, the scope of
practice is also guided by the professional code of ethics and professional values argues Scanlon,
Cashin, Bryce, Kelly, & Buckely, (2016). In addition, Halcomb, Stephens, Bryce, Foley, &
Ashley, (2017) adds that the scope of nursing practice extends to cover a standard set of skills.
These skills include administration and monitoring medications, insertion and removal of IV
lines and intraurethral catheters, assessment and management of patients and developing
individualized plan of care for patients. Nurses also record vital signs as part of their routine
carefully checking for any present abnormalities, documentation, admission and discharge of
patients, patient transfer, support and safety. It is important to consider the fact that registered
nurses rarely diagnose or recommend medicines but sometimes they are empowered to do so for
only a limited number of conditions to deal with workforce shortages in the healthcare sector
(McKenna, Halcomb, Lane, Zwar, & Russell, 2015).

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According to Kelly, Berragan, Husebø, & Orr, (2016), the registered nurse standards of
practice, the nurses’ roles and responsibilities have been summarized and grouped in 7 major
categories. These professional standards are the thresholds that nurses are expected to meet in
their profession. These includes thinking critically and analyzing practice, engaging in healthy
therapeutic and professional relationships with patients and staff, maintaining competence and
practice capability, conducting assessments comprehensively, developing plans of care for
patients, improving safety and quality of care in health and evaluation of nursing outcomes to
inform nursing practice argues Xue, Ye, Brewer, & Spetz, (2016). It is therefore quite clear that
nurses play a vital role in healthcare which is not only limited to attending patients but also to
leadership and continuous quality improvement.
Nurses are also governed by a professional code of ethics and values that further
highlight their scope of practice. The nurses’ professional ethics and values guides the conduct of
nurses towards a more acceptable and predictable behavioral pattern argues McInnes, Peters,
Bonney, & Halcomb, (2017). The registered nurse code of ethics in Australia focuses on
respecting patients’ rights and according quality care to all people, value for kindness and
showing respect towards oneself and other people as well, respect of diversity, access to quality,
informed and competency decision making, safety in care, ethical management of information
and creation of a sustainable environment conducive for practice (McInnes, Peters, Bonney, &
Halcomb, 2015).
As a nurse, I have also come to learn of the importance of personal values such as
empathy, compassion, kindness and fear of God. These are values that teach people to be good to
others by the virtue of being humans and to show no partiality, discrimination or ill will.
Personal values help to strengthen the professional ethics and values of care such as increased

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commitment to moral courage. It helps nurses to be able to withhold the ethical principles of
autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. According to Bastable, (2017) personal
values however are supposed to be consistent to professional values to complement and not to
contradict. To ensure this, nurses are charged to adhere to professional governing and regulating
bodies which work towards maintaining professional indemnity for nurses. Professional
indemnity charges nurses not to engage in activities that are beyond their scope of practice
(Cashin, Heartfield, Bryce, Devey, Buckley, Cox, & Fisher, 2017).
After the completion of my nursing degree, I will venture into the BSN psychiatric nurse.
I had quite some challenges and difficulties before I finally settled for this option. Initially, I had
wanted to focus on an areas that were more salaried than the average nurse such as research and
anesthetic. However, I came to realize that based on my values and preferences, such areas
would not be as emotionally fulfilling as psychiatry. This I developed during my placement
because I was able to identify with various challenges that patients were going through mentally
and emotionally.
For many people being sick or having a sick relative or friend is always a hard time. To
some people, it is depressing to be a burden to others and many people with terminal illnesses
often choose to end their lives. To some family members, medical bills are a source of stress and
depression. This therefore explains that mental illnesses are likely to develop due to being sick or
having a patient in the house. Many people also take long to heal after losing a loved one and it
is upon these situations that I developed my urge to venture into psychiatry. As a psychiatric
nurse, I will be able to provide the required care to patients suffering from mental health diseases
and various psychiatric disorders.

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According to Parker, & Hill, (2017), depression, schizophrenia and depression are not life
threatening conditions but they are associated with stigma and they may lead to other diseases as
well. People suffering from mental illnesses are hard to treat of other illnesses and they therefore
require specialized attention. I therefore long to have training on behavioral therapy so as to be
able to help these patients as well as their families to help the patients improve their health and to
also prevent the illness. The psychiatric nurse offers a multidisciplinary approach to care
whereby they collaborate various other health practitioners such as social workers and
occupational therapists to be able to effectively diagnose the condition as well as give
individualized high quality attention to the patient that is focused on improving outcomes.

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References
Bastable, S. B. (2017). Nurse as educator: Principles of teaching and learning for nursing
practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Birks, M., Davis, J., Smithson, J., & Cant, R. (2016). Registered nurse scope of practice in
Australia: an integrative review of the literature. Contemporary Nurse, 52(5), 522-543.
Cashin, A., Heartfield, M., Bryce, J., Devey, L., Buckley, T., Cox, D., ... & Fisher, M. (2017).
Standards for practice for registered nurses in Australia. Collegian, 24(3), 255-266.
Halcomb, E., Stephens, M., Bryce, J., Foley, E., & Ashley, C. (2017). The development of
professional practice standards for Australian general practice nurses. Journal of
Advanced Nursing, 73(8), 1958-1969.
Kelly, M. A., Berragan, E., Husebø, S. E., & Orr, F. (2016). Simulation in nursing education—
International perspectives and contemporary scope of practice. Journal of Nursing
Scholarship, 48(3), 312-321.
McInnes, S., Peters, K., Bonney, A., & Halcomb, E. (2015). An integrative review of facilitators
and barriers influencing collaboration and teamwork between general practitioners and
nurses working in general practice. Journal of advanced nursing, 71(9), 1973-1985.
McInnes, S., Peters, K., Bonney, A., & Halcomb, E. (2017). A qualitative study of collaboration
in general practice: understanding the general practice nurse's role. Journal of clinical
nursing, 26(13-14), 1960-1968.

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McKenna, L., Halcomb, E., Lane, R., Zwar, N., & Russell, G. (2015). An investigation of
barriers and enablers to advanced nursing roles in Australian general
practice. Collegian, 22(2), 183-189.
Parker, J. M., & Hill, M. N. (2017). A review of advanced practice nursing in the united states,
canada, australia and hong kong special administrative region (SAR),
china. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 4(2), 196-204.
Scanlon, A., Cashin, A., Bryce, J., Kelly, J. G., & Buckely, T. (2016). The complexities of
defining nurse practitioner scope of practice in the Australian context. Collegian, 23(1),
129-142.
Xue, Y., Ye, Z., Brewer, C., & Spetz, J. (2016). Impact of state nurse practitioner scope-of-
practice regulation on health care delivery: Systematic review. Nursing outlook, 64(1),
71-85.