Analysis of Professional Identity in Nursing: A Case Study

This essay examines the concept of professional identity within the context of nursing, using Caitlin Brassington as a case study. It explores the core values and attributes that define a strong professional identity, including competence, integrity, compassion, and specialized knowledge. The essay analyzes how these aspects contribute to a nurse's ability to provide effective patient care and build meaningful relationships. The author reflects on Brassington's dedication, multidimensional skills, and commitment to her profession, drawing parallels to their own experiences and highlighting the challenges faced by nurses. The essay emphasizes the importance of professionalism and its impact on patient outcomes and the overall nursing profession. It also references multiple academic sources to support its claims and provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic.

PROFESSIONAL
IDENTITY

Professional identity is the set of values, experience beliefs and thoughts regarding a
particular role in the field of work (Professional Identity, 2014). This essay throws light on
values that complement in professional identity formation in the context of nursing. The theme
of this essay is “Yes, Caitlin Brassington demonstrate a professional identity”. It focuses on
understanding the aspects of nursing that support professional nursing identity. According to the
article named “Just a nurse”, Caitlin Brassington fulfils all the attributes of professionalism
through her specialized knowledge, respect, honesty and dedication for her profession. She is
able to set a good example of professional identity by systematically organising, evaluating and
identifying the cognizance of self.
Part A
Professional identity and professional nursing
Professional identity concerns with the interaction among different groups in the work
place and helps them to achieve the practical view of profession. It helps them to identify their
roles and understanding for their profession. The profession of nursing is challenging sometimes
but commitment given to patients should not be sacrificed. There are various aspects of the
nursing that support the concept of professional identity. First and foremost aspect is conscience
and integrity. It helps by guiding in condition of stress or while dealing with personal matters to
concentrate over the morals of nursing and provide with internal sense about what is right.
Competence is another aspect of professional nursing identity (Brassington, 2016). It is related to
completing work on time in professional manner and holding to the high standard while fulfilling
the routine tasks.
Feeling of compassion and respect are the aspects that help nurses to provide patients
with positive treatment care. In the form of result, nurses receive an inspiring sense of
connection and belief regarding the importance of their work. Last but not the least, the aspect of
specialized knowledge helps the professionals to contribute their best in particular field. A nurse,
through her experience and skills, can help the patients and their family members to come up
from difficulties. She provides them with self-will that helps in bringing positive changes in
health of patients.
Discerning of refuting professional aspect of a nurse role
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According to the role of Caitlin Brassington in her blog following aspects can be inferred:
She has deep knowledge and understanding of her profession. She is honest and have integrity
for patients along with the attribute of competency. According to Sins and Karlgren (2013),
education in nursing is important for getting deeper knowledge and understanding for the
profession. The roles of nurses are multidimensional and decision making is the key aspect of
this profession. It involves the process of gathering information about the patients and his family
then evaluating the received data and provide the judgement that result in effective care of
patients.
As per the view of Carvalho (2014), specialized knowledge helps clinical nurses in
providing the patients with safe and quality care by avoiding the harms to sufferer. The education
on advanced nursing practices and new technique helps nurses to perform actions that have
brought many patients back to their life again (Ortiga, 2014). Caitlin delivers the lectures and
teaches the medical student about the physical examination. Along with this she is also able to
differentiate between which type of care should be given to particulate age of patients. This
completely satisfies that she has deep knowledge and understanding of her profession. On the
basis of specialized knowledge Caitlin have performed Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) on
her patients and provided them a new life. She has also managed many cardiac arrest in new born
babies and helped them to take their first breathe into the world. This was the result of her
immense understanding and mastery in her profession (Kitson, Marshall, Bassett and Zeitz,
2013).
Integrity can be defined as the state of being honest and comprising strong moral
principles. Being responsible and accountable for the ones judgement is the key principle of the
nurse's role. Nurses habitual of practising with integrity have strong sense of understanding
about the fact that what is right and what is wrong. It enhances the decision making and critical
thinking ability of the practitioners and nurses. The ability to form strong relationship with
patients to provide them with appropriate caring and healing procedures strongly relies on
integrity of practitioners (Mylrea, Gupta and Glass, 2015). Caitlin provide comfort, emotional
and social support to patients and their family due to the relationship build up between them on
the bridge of trust and honesty. The act portraying herself as the advocate of all patients proves
her integrity for them. Due to this understanding she was able to provide suitable care to patients
with anatomical, psychological and physiological differences.
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According to Allen (2014), care for oneself empowers the person to become more kind,
gentle and compassionate for others. It is believed that nurses are able to attain more moral ideas
whenever he or she uses the whole of self to make relation with the whole of patients who wants
the care. Caitlin provides her patients with dosage of adrenaline and amiodarone based on the
weight of child and they trust her prescription due to the relationship built on the basis of
integrity.
Competency is the ability of a person to perform the task efficiently and successfully. It is
the combination of all the skills, abilities and knowledge that ultimately enhances the
performance and result in a great success. According to Noble and et.al. (2014), nurses and
practitioners need continuous updates regarding the knowledge and new skills to nurture their
practising technique. It is important for nurses to limit themselves to the particular work in which
they feel confident. Characteristics of competence involves quick problem solving capacity,
effective interpersonal skills, solid stamina and most important sense of humour. Solving the
problem quickly is the important quality of good nurse. However, identifying and providing
remedy to problems before they rise is far better quality and can be achieved only through
competence.
It is well said that the career in nursing is full of difficulties but a proper sense of humour
is the best remedy to this problem. The feeling of competence increases the level of thinking and
responding accordingly to the particular situation. Apart from all these qualities excellent
interpersonal skills that help nurses to maintain the right balance between the senior doctors and
the patients need.
From the above mentioned essay it can be concluded that many aspects of professional
identity have major role to play in nursing profession. Attributes of professionalism such as
competence, specific knowledge and understanding for profession along with integrity and
honesty help a person to excel in his or her profile (Feller, 2014). It is recommended to all the
nurses to put more emphasis on the principle of professionalism. It will help them to come up
with far more excellence and a positive attitude toward their work.
Part B-
While, I was reading the Caitlin’s depiction regarding her role of Registered Nurse (RN)
I was quite surprised. As she had mentioned her routine work, it was much complex. But, even
then, she had to hear for her profession as being 'Just a nurse'. It can be analysed that she also
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had a family but she is as much dedicated to her profession as towards her family. Even
sometimes patients scream at her and many had done vomiting on her but still she comes to work
and complete her job. This is the true example of professionalism, which includes her dedication
and flexibility for her job (Habibzadeh, Ahmadi and Vanaki, 2013).
Being a nurse, I have also learned many qualities and traits that I would like to include in
my profession. She works on the multidimensional basis, as she performs all the task from giving
patients CPR to providing lectures in school. She had immense knowledge of her profession as
she also teaches medical students how to perform the physical test on patients. I am highly
influenced by her quality of integrity and honesty for the patient and their family. Through her
blog I learned the importance of communications skills as how she counsels the parents who lost
the child. In the time of festival also she used to serve her patients first and sacrificed the
musicals and ceremonies. In many conditions she managed to provide family of patients with
emotional and social support.
It is completely true that nursing profession faces many hurdles and difficulties
(Pizirtzidou, 2014). Even I also face many problems while performing my routine duty in
hospital. It happens sometime that I have to stay for more than 16 hours in hospital without any
rest and break for refreshment or tea. It becomes difficult to bear such situations but core
dedication for profession helps to withstand against this. In some cases there are some patients
that need acute care so I have to work in night to take care of them. But this is nothing in front of
work done by Caitlin and I am highly influenced by her qualities of compassion and empathetic.
At last one thing that strikes my mind about this blog was Caitlin has been appreciated by
many professional doctors and nurses for her work. She was encouraged and respected for her
professional nursing identity. Social media was used in positive manner by making people aware
about difficulties that are faced by nurses in their profession. It helps in making people
understand how nurses manage their both professional and personal life without having any
impact on their profession (Ortiga, 2014). Other thing that strike my mind was Caitlin have three
daughters of her own instead of taking care of them by herself she handed them to babysitter just
to fulfil her duty of taking care of patients. It is one of the biggest sacrifice for a mother to hand
over their children's to someone else for taking care. This makes her deserve more and more
respect and gratitude.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Allen, D. (2014). Re-conceptualising holism in the contemporary nursing mandate: From
individual to organisational relationships. Social Science & Medicine, 119, 131-138.
Carvalho, T. (2014). Changing connections between professionalism and managerialism: a case
study of nursing in Portugal. Journal of Professions and Organization, 1(2), 176-190.
Feller, L. M. (2014). Development of professional nursing values: Differences in nursing
students' values based on program type and delivery method(Doctoral dissertation,
University of South Dakota).
Habibzadeh, H., Ahmadi, F., & Vanaki, Z. (2013). Facilitators and Barriers to the
Professionalization of Nursing in Iran. International Journal of Community Based
Nursing and Midwifery, 1(1), 16-25.
Kitson, A., Marshall, A., Bassett, K., & Zeitz, K. (2013). What are the core elements of patient‐
centred care? A narrative review and synthesis of the literature from health policy,
medicOrtiga, Y. Y. (2014)ine and nursing. Journal of advanced nursing, 69(1), 4-15.
Mylrea, M. F., Gupta, T. S., & Glass, B. D. (2015). Professionalization in pharmacy education as
a matter of identity. American journal of pharmaceutical education, 79(9), 142.
Noble, C., & et.al., (2014). Becoming a pharmacist: Students’ perceptions of their curricular
experience and professional identity formation. Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and
Learning, 6(3), 327-339.
Ortiga, Y. Y. (2014). Professional problems: The burden of producing the “global” Filipino
nurse. Social science & medicine, 115, 64-71.
Pizirtzidou, E. (2014). The concept of self-esteem in nursing education and its impact on
professional behaviour. International Journal of Caring Sciences, 7(1), 6.
Sins, P., & Karlgren, K. (2013). Identifying and overcoming tension in interdisciplinary
teamwork in profesional development. Affective learning together, 185-203.
Online
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Brassington, C., (2016). 'Just a nurse': Queensland woman writes open letter to woman at corner
store. [Online]. Available through <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-11/just-a-nurse-
queensland-woman-writes-open-letter/7919422>. [Accessed on 9th September 2017].
Professional Identity. (2014). [PDF]. Available through
<https://derby.openrepository.com/derby/bitstream/10545/324124/1/Professional+Identit
y+What+I+call+myself+defines+who+I+am.pdf>. [Accessed on 9th September 2017].
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