Exploring Professional Roles and Values in Baccalaureate Nursing

This report provides a comprehensive overview of professional roles and values in nursing, focusing on the experiences and learnings of a baccalaureate-prepared nurse. It explores key aspects such as quality and safety in healthcare settings, emphasizing the importance of well-organized and effective care, and the role of simulation lab experiences in developing critical skills. The report delves into evidence-based practice (EBP), highlighting its application in clinical decision-making and the significance of considering both internal and external factors, as well as the value of senior health professionals' expertise. Applied leadership skills are also discussed, with an emphasis on collaboration, communication, and coordination, and their impact on patient outcomes. Finally, the report examines community and population health, illustrating the nurse's role in assessing local health quality, providing interventions, and addressing issues like teenage pregnancy and domestic violence. The report underscores the importance of nurses in modern healthcare, their ability to assess patients, and their role in providing quality care.

Running head: PROFESSIONAL ROLES AND VALUES
PROFESSIONAL ROLES AND VALUES
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
The role of nursing work force is important in this present healthcare system and in near
future, it is going to be even bigger. The quality of nursing care affects a vast population around
the world because of their reach and their contribution in the healthcare system. There are several
factors of nurses such as their depth of knowledge, their education level and job satisfaction
helps in the growth of the organization. however, the present scenario of primary healthcare
demand more educated and more reliable workforce of nurses, who are able to play pivotal roles
in care, prevention and care combination. Therefore, baccalaureate-prepared nurses are important
for modern healthcare system. As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, I am going to discuss about
several aspects of my learnings such as quality and safety, evidence based practice, applied
leadership and community and population health and will discuss the clinical experiences
associated with these aspects.
Quality and safety
As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, I am prepared to work in all healthcare settings like
outpatient care, clinical care, public and mental health. The community is now focusing beyond
the hospitals and seeking help in home-based environments or preventive service. As a result, the
demand of baccalaureate-prepared nurses has increased (Ball et al., 2013). We are trained in
different aspects of care and skills such as clinical and scientific skills, decision-making ability,
patient education, leadership, and laboratory and community health. I never thought of becoming
a register nurse; however, a personal experience forced me to join this profession. This
experience was very important and painful to me as I lost my mother in that jet crash and saw
several injured people dying because of poor healthcare safety and quality (Dolansky & Moore,
2013). This incident had a strong impact on my individuality and forced me to join this Nobel

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profession to help the community. Thereby, I know the importance of quality and safety in the
healthcare system. Through my learnings in all these years, as per my experience, quality
determines the well-organized, effective and determined care whereas safety is related with the
lack of risks or harm. My learnings as a baccalaureate-prepared nurse has trained me to make
decision in adverse situations and create a team within the healthcare system to face the
emergency. The primary skill that differentiates me from other nurses is the skill and simulation
lab experience. I have been a part of the skills and simulation lab during my course training on
mannequins. Therefore, I have been exposed to different learning objectives that are not possible
in the hospital clinical experience. I have been a part of clinical rotation program that has trained
me to gain experience from different clinical area and community settings. Moreover,
professional practice skills acquired will help me to control the crisis and lead the team in
positive way to serve quality care to the patient.
Evidence based practice
Evidence based practice (EBP) is a problem solving approach that helps to make the
clinical decision in a healthcare organization. It focuses on the three pillars of the quality
healthcare, including the best evidence or research available with an expertized practitioner and
the values and preferences of the patient (DiCenso, Guyatt & Ciliska, 2014). Evidence based
practice involves the internal and external evidences of the practice and allows the practitioners
to take account of the patients value, before applying it as the intervention. As a baccalaureate-
prepared nurse, I am aware of the internal and external factors of the EBP. Internal factors such
as environment, culture, staffs, equipment and external factors are standards, regulations and
quality measures. However, I came to know about an important factor of EBP during my
learnings that, research is not always depending on the researches and findings done by

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researchers, experience and expertise of senior health professionals can be a non-research
clinical intervention that can be used as research in the EBP (Stevens, 2013). Our tutors
enhanced this curiosity-based practice as they used to allow us think critically during practices
(Melnyk et al., 2014). For example, during my first clinical practice, my group and I were to
investigate an elderly patient, who had a traumatic crush injury. We had to find out the reason of
his elevated creatine kinase level. Our tutor asked as to find out the three reasons for such event,
through research, patient experience or healthcare expert. This was the first time I came to know
about the term evidence based practice. During my skills labs and simulation practices as well, I
utilized the learnings acquired from EBP to practice my interventions. However, from my
experience, I came to know that fact that, evidence based practice is not always helpful to find
the best treatment available for the patient. The reason is, same intervention can put different
effect on different people. However, the learnings of EBP is going to help me in future as
baccalaureate-prepared nurse and I am going to apply such knowledge for the betterment of my
patients (Schaffer, Sandau & Diedrick, 2013).
Applied leadership
Modern healthcare is the biggest reason for the increased activity of older people and
increased life span of people. This is administered by the quality treatment provided by the
healthcare and nursing staff involved in the care (Bamford, Wong & Laschinger, 2013). They
have the ability to assess a patient within minutes and this technique is acquired by nursing
leadership skills. Such leadership skills are constants in healthcare professional despite of several
other changes. The five essential skills that were taught to us while out learnings was
collaboration, coordination, evaluation, negotiation and communication (Hutchinson & Jackson,
2013). These five skills are key factor for developing leadership skills that are directly associated

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with patient satisfaction, safety outcomes, mortality, adverse conditions, complications and
healthcare utilization. Collaborative skill is very important for nursing practice as it forms the
most important aspect of healthcare that is team care. Collaboration helps to define the problem,
find directions to solve them and outline the structure to overcome it. During many practical
sessions, when I had to be in a team of three or four students, my interpersonal skills and
organizational skills helped me to assess the problem. Therefore, communication skill is as
important as collaborative skill for nursing leadership. During my internship in the cardiac ward,
I understand the value of negotiation and communication skills. I used these skills to direct the
patient to move according to my instructions and take analgesia. The value of coordination was
taught to us, during my learnings in a multi-disciplinary team. During that clinical trial, it was
my responsibility to provide them with responsibilities and delegating tasks (Wong, Cummings
& Ducharme, 2013). Hence, I am aware of the importance of nursing leadership skills for the
betterment of the patient. Emergency healthcare situation is the moment, when plenty of
healthcare experts and nursing staff lose their nerves. They are unable to think the accurate
intervention needed to save the patient. The leadership skills are useful in such moment; when a
healthcare professional directs the team to provide better care to the patient to save his/her life.
While the simulation lab practice, in cardiac healthcare settings, there was a conflict regarding
the dressing technique of a patient, recovering from open-heart surgery. However, I provided
evidences for the hydrocolloid dressing technique and I convinced the entire team to use this
technique for the patient safety. Throughout my learnings as a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, I
came through situations, when my leadership and communication skills helped me to apply
intervention, distribute works and assess the care provided to the patient (Porter-O’grady, 2015).

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Community and population health
Modern healthcare is complex and there is a large population of people who are constantly in
contact with the toxoids due to changed environmental condition. In this scenario, there is a need
for a team of nurses who are able to provide treatment to these patients without the aid for the
doctor. These nurses serve the entire community (Clark, 2015). Their primary role is to assess
the quality of health in their locality, and provide the community with interventions or
educations to enhance their health (Maurer & Smith, 2013). During my learnings as
baccalaureate-prepared nurse, I had an internship where I had to be in a community, where
people were unaware about the benefits of breast milk for the betterment of the kids. That
community was suffering from infant diarrhea and was reluctant to the adverse effects their
practice can put on the health of those babies. For this purpose, several subjects were taught to us
during our learnings such as biostatistics, environmental health, social, behavioral science, and
epidemiology. There were several other issue that the community was facing were teenage
pregnancy and domestic violence. Hence, it was a challenging task for me to convince those
people to apply interventions for their own security and health. This public and community
healthcare make me understand the basic problems of the healthcare system. Their beliefs and
practices about healthcare made me aware of the key activities that makes the community prone
to different infections. I visited different houses, community centers and workplaces to assess the
medical assistance and inspection. I applied my communication and negotiation skills to
collaborate with the healthcare professionals working for that community. I arranged different
campaigns to promote breast-feeding in that community and described the importance of the
practice to stop the infant diarrhea. I visited all those teenage pregnant girls and made them
aware of the strategies for the care of their babies and themselves. As the medical science

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progresses, socio-economic status is dividing people and affecting their right to attain healthcare
(Stanhope & Lancaster. 2015). I came to know this fact while interacting to the community, as
they were not ready to seek assistance from the community healthcare. Therefore, it is the duty
of those community and public healthcare nurses to make them aware of the importance of
healthcare. I, with the help of community workers arranged sessions to talk with the leaders of
that community to spread the awareness through them. My clinical trials, lab techniques,
simulation sessions and clinical rotations helped me to serve that community on 24-hour basis
for 2 months. As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, this session helped me to understand the
communal and cultural importance of different communities, and application of those believes to
provide them with quality healthcare (Kemppainen, Tossavainen & Turunen, 2013).

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