Reviewing the Enrolled Nurse Standards for Practice and Application

This report provides a summary of the Enrolled Nurse Standards for practice, highlighting their importance in assessing and standardizing the quality of nursing care. It emphasizes the role of enrolled nurses in providing patient care under the supervision of registered nurses, their responsibility for continuous professional development, and the significance of critical thinking and empathy in their practice. The standards are structured around three domains: professional and collaborative practice, and provision of care, each with specific expectations regarding knowledge, skills, and attitudes. The report references studies that demonstrate the positive impact of empathy on patient outcomes and the correlation between critical thinking and nursing competence, reinforcing the importance of these qualities in nursing practice. The flowchart further provides guidance on nursing practice decisions and integration.

The Enrolled Nurse Standards for
practice (2016): Summary
The Enrolled Nurse Standards (ENs) for practice provides fixed criteria to assess enrolled nurses
thereby setting benchmark for quality nursing care to patients &priming the general public about
the services that can be expected from them. Enrolled Nurse Standards(ENs) is useful for
standardizing and defining the course for nurses, for assessing the nurses who have studied
overseas or new graduates & students, or those who have taken a break in professional life.The
Enrolled Nurse Standards (ENs) reflect the role of nurses in the workplace, and are based on
principles that define the work efficacy and proficiency in a range of situation. Enrolled Nurse
needs to have an assigned and accessible Registered Nurse (RN) all the time, need to work under
direct or indirect supervision of registered nurse, and are assigned with personal care of patient,
assuming the complete responsibility of their actions. As any health professional, Enrolled
Nurses are also expected to continuously keep themselves updated with the recent advances
which would help them in improving patient care standards, and should be able to perform the
basic duties that are expected from them.
Enrolled Nurse Standards (ENs) ensure that the concerned nurse is able to think critically in a
clinical setting, which is basically pausing, observing the situation, devise a solution, and try to
implement it. Clinical skills are required to be a nurse but ability to think critically makes them a
competent and good one as critical thinking forms the fine line between saving and losing a
patient’s life. Ability to think critically is positively correlated with nursing competence (Chang,
M. J., 2011). Enrolled Nurse Standards (ENs) expect them to be empathetic to patient i.e listen
to the patient, understand what the patient is going through, their personal or financial struggle,
there by empowering the patient , making him feel good, respected and important, which would
go a long way is successful implementation of patients treatment protocol and care. Empathy
towards patient doesn’t only mean words, but that look, the body language is enough to make
them believe that they are there for them. For example, for a patient X who once led an active
life, but is now bedridden or decapitated, a slight importance given by the patients nurse Y
regarding his food choices, or some time spent by nurse listening to patient X’s talks or
experiences, might help the patient develop a positive state of mind towards life, and this act may
be categorized as an act of empathy on the part of nurse Y. Study involving empathetic behavior
of nursing staff towards psychiatric patients have demonstrated definite improvement in patients
in terms of reduced need for seclusion or use of restraint in patients (Yang, C. P. P, 2014).
Nursing students inherently have a finesse for developing help-relationship with other people
(Hojat, M., 2016). Enrolled Nurse Standards provide guidelines that are available to public,
government organizations, health care professionals, licensing organization, health care
agencies,educational institutes that form the baseline to judge the skills and proficiency of
individual in variety of clinical setting.
The Enrolled Nurses are judged on the basis of 3 broad domains with knowledge, skill and
attitude being the indicators in each domain.

Professional and collaborative practice domain expects the Enrolled Nurse to have knowledge of
policies and law pertaining to patient care, to adhere to the rules and guidelines of workplace,
haveknowledge of procedures to be performed, follow the plan of care that best benefits the
patient, seek guidance and knowledge from RN wherever there is lack of competence, respect the
confidentiality & privacy of the individual, provide service with any discrimination irrespective
of caste, creed , religion, ethnicity of the individual, coordinate with Registered Nurse (RN) and
other healthcare professional to ensure the correct information is collected, and be self-regulatory
in order to maintain credibility of the profession.
Provision of care domain expects Enrolled Nurse to collect, record, analyze and monitor
information gathered to achieve expected results.

References
Chang, M. J., Chang, Y. J., Kuo, S. H., Yang, Y. H., & Chou, F. H. (2011). Relationships between critical
thinking ability and nursing competence in clinical nurses. Journal of clinical nursing, 20(21 22), 3224-‐
3232.
Hojat, M. (2016). Empathy and patient outcomes. In Empathy in Health Professions Education and
Patient Care (pp. 189-201). Springer, Cham.
Yang, C. P. P., Hargreaves, W. A., &Bostrom, A. (2014). Association of empathy of nursing staff with
reduction of seclusion and restraint in psychiatric inpatient care. Psychiatric Services, 65(2), 251-254