NR 500 Week 2 Discussion: Knowing Self

There has never been a more important time to practice cultural competence and humility in nursing practice than the current moment. The patients and staff we interact on a daily basis with come from an endless variety of race, culture, sexual orientation, religion, and socioeconomic class that often differs from the caregiver. Two core values that not only define but influence my nursing practice and interaction with those I come in contact with are professional integrity and compassionate service. Professionalism coupled with strong integrity, displays certain attributes like trust, accountability, ethical commitment, reliability, and respect (Rosa & Lubansky, 2016). By displaying a professional commitment to the practice of nursing, I am able to treat every patient, no matter their background, with a nonjudgmental, holistic approach to their care.

Compassionate service, my second core value, requires self-reflection on my part. Understanding the commitment and challenges faced in healthcare that require compassion no matter the circumstance, is of upmost importance in nursing practice (Rosa & Lubansky, 2016). As a nurse, it is expected of me to show compassion in my care to patients and families, despite the situation. Providing compassion comes from within, before it can be displayed outward, and can be done so by reflecting upon myself, my own world-views, and personal philosophies. Nurses are unlike any other healthcare discipline with our positive contributions to health. Providing compassionate and professional care to all persons of the human race should be held to a high standard.

In 41 years of life and 20 years of nursing, I have been witness to many challenging experiences. One situation that comes to mind was during my years as a NICU RN. My assignment on a particular day was caring for a premature infant who was born into a non-traditional family with 2 mothers. The baby was conceived via artificial insemination and the birth mother and same sex partner would be parenting this baby. During the time spent in the NICU, it is not uncommon for preemies to spend weeks and sometime months as they mature enough to breathe and feed without medical assistance. During the NICU stay, the birth mother was pumping her breast milk so as to provide optimal nutrition for her baby. Shortly after admission, the 2 mothers shared their desire with the neonatologist and NICU staff that they both, along with the maternal grandmother, and a close friend all planned to provide breastmilk to this baby. The women who did not deliver the baby were taking medication to induce lactation. Their desire was to ultimately all share in the breastfeeding/bonding experience with this baby. From a medical standpoint, there is obvious concerns for providing bodily fluids to an infant in hospital care that does not belong to the birth mother.

Struggling to Meet Your Deadline?

Get your assignment on NR 500 Week 2 Discussion: Knowing Self done on time by medical experts. Don’t wait – ORDER NOW!

Meet my deadline

Risk Management was consulted and the ultimate decision was made that only the birth mother could supply her breastmilk, which was in ample supply, to this baby during the NICU stay. As the bedside nurse, I found this situation challenging because my primary goal was to provide safe and excellent care to this baby. However, family centered care is also of upmost importance and respecting the mother’s wishes, even when they may or may not align with my own or the institution I worked for, was important also. This is where compassion came in. Treating this family unit with respect and a non-judgmental approach was a key component of my care. Education of premature infants and their fragile intestines was given to this family.

My core value of professionalism was challenged as I continued to provide the same care to this baby and family as I would any other in my NICU care. I learned to expect the unexpected in nursing and be prepared to handle each situation with respect and compassion. Cultural awareness, knowledge, and sensitivity are key skills for nurses today. Hanna, Salminen, Papadopoulos, & Leino-Kilpi (2017) suggest that education on cultural competence in nursing is essential to providing effective and responsive healthcare to our diverse populations. I believe this to be a lifelong learning process and maintaining awareness of our diversities as human beings will assist in providing excellent care to our patients and families.

References:

Repo, H., Vahlberg, T., Salminen, L., Papadopoulos, I., & Leino-Kilpi, H. (2017). The

cultural competence of graduating nursing students. Journal of Transcultural

Nursing. 28(1), 98-107. doi: 10.1177/1043659616632046

Rosa, W., & Lubansky, S. (2016). The advanced practice holistic nurse: A leader in the

implementation of core values. Advanced Practice Holistic Nursing. 36(3), 10-13.

Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27522855

NR 500 Week 2 Discussion: Knowing Self

Reflect the concepts addressed in this week’s lesson plan and required reading. Recall a challenging experience in either your personal or professional life. In the initial response, start with an introduction that includes a brief description of two core values that influence your nursing practice and interaction with others. Provide a concise description of the challenging experience. What core values were challenged in this experience? What lessons were learned from this experience? How did the experience inform future professional behaviors, decisions, and actions? Provide a specific example on how lessons learned from the challenging experience were applied in your professional practice. Use at least one outside scholarly reference to support your position.

Click here to ORDER an A++ paper from our Verified MASTERS and DOCTORATE WRITERS NR 500 Week 2 Discussion: Knowing Self:

religion, and socioeconomic class that often differs from the caregiver. Two core values that not only define but influence my nursing practice and interaction with those I come in contact with are professional integrity and compassionate service. Professionalism coupled with strong integrity, displays certain attributes like trust, accountability, ethical commitment, reliability, and respect (Rosa & Lubansky, 2016). By displaying a professional commitment to the practice of nursing, I am able to treat every patient, no matter their background, with a nonjudgmental, holistic approach to their care.

Click here to ORDER an A++ paper from our Verified MASTERS and DOCTORATE WRITERS: NR 500 Week 2 Discussion: Knowing Self

Values are goals and beliefs that guide conduct and serve as a foundation for making decisions [1].

Values are standards for action advocated by specialists and professional groups in a profession, and they offer frameworks for judging behavior [2].

Nursing is a profession built on professional ethics and ethical ideals, and nursing performance reflects these beliefs.

Altruism, autonomy, human dignity, integrity, honesty, and social justice are all core nursing ideals [3].

The essential ethical ideals are universally shared in the worldwide population, and they are a reflection of the nursing profession’s human and spiritual perspective.

However, the values in patient care are influenced by the community’s cultural, social, economic, and religious factors, making it necessary to identify such values in each country [4].

Ethical codes [5] reflect professional principles.

In reality, ethical rules define nursing practices, professional care quality, and professional norms [2].

Technological advancements and the growth of nursing duties have created difficult ethical challenges for nurses.

If not handled effectively, such challenges have a significant impact on inexperienced nurses’ capacity to make clinical choices [6].

The promotion of professional values has become more important in nursing education as the quantity and complexity of ethical challenges in care settings has grown.

Promoting the nursing profession begins with the acquisition and internalization of values [2].

When values are internalized, they become the norms in practice and serve as a guide for behavior [7].

Education can be used to teach, modify, and promote values either directly or indirectly [8].

Each student comes to nursing school with a set of ideals that may alter as they become more socialized [9].

Nursing’s future depends on the intentional integration of professional values in nursing education [10, 11].

One of the most important outcomes of educating students ethics and professional principles is that they become more capable of making ethical decisions on their own [12].

Nursing students learn professional values through their school educators’ teaching and the socialization process.

Professional socialization is the process of forming a profession’s values, attitudes, and actions [13].

Seda and Sleem found a link between students’ professional socializing and their professional values improvement in their study [9].

Nursing students should gain necessary skills and knowledge in cognitive, emotional, and practical dimensions through professional socialization, which results in the total acquisition and internalization of values.

Currently, however, the emotional factor in the creation of values receives less attention than the other two [14].

Individuals should attain the fourth or fifth stage of Bloom’s emotional domain learning, i.e. value organization and internalization, in order to create a value system.

At this level, value stabilization necessitates the passage of time [15].

Education creates disparities in the formation of professional values, according to studies, and nursing educators have a substantial impact on the stimulation of professional values [8, 14, 16, 17].

Wehrwein found that ethics education was beneficial when students’ understanding of ethical dilemmas and the application of principles in the workplace rose.

Furthermore, students who had taken an ethics course were reported to have a better ability to make ethical decisions than those who had not [18].

As a result, nursing educators have a critical role in defining how nurses will grow professionally and be prepared to face new, inescapable issues in the future [9].

Professors and educators, in clinical settings and at all levels of education, play an important role in shaping students’ perceptions of nursing and the nurse’s job.

Students can strengthen their commitment to professional values both directly and indirectly through role playing and observing professional values-related activities [14].

Because of their clinical expertise, sense of responsibility, professional commitment, and personal attributes such as kindness, flexibility, and honesty, nursing educators are good role models.

Nursing educators encourage critical thinking and decision-making, create a supportive learning atmosphere, have technical and ethical knowledge, and provide chances for fair evaluation and feedback to help students learn more creatively.

Effective ways for dealing with ethical challenges should be taught to nursing students [12].

Students’ perceptions on professional principles have an impact on how they use such values in their future profession [14, 15, 19, 20].

As a foundation for using more successful ways for applying professional values, nursing educators need to be better aware of nursing students’ viewpoints on the importance of professional values.

As a result, nursing educators are able to prepare graduates who are equipped to make decisions and deal successfully with ethical difficulties on a regular basis.

Nursing instructors and students must be aware of professional nursing values in order to prepare nurses to offer ethical and professional patient care [6].

In Iran, researchers discovered insufficient data on nursing students’ professional values.

The purpose of this study was to look at the importance of professional values from the perspective of nursing students because of the potential impact of cultures and clinical environments on professional values.

Altruism and autonomy are two fundamental core professional nursing values that have influenced my nursing practice and interactions with others. Altruism is the concern for the welfare and well being of others; autonomy refers to the right to self-determination and self-direction, even during challenges, obstacles, and disadvantages (Shaw H. & Degazon C, 2008). These core values have been critical in providing quality care and fostering an environment in which cultural competence is sought after. I recall caring for an eleven-month-old male in the CICU with CHD, CLD, who had untreatable cardiac anomalies and was in multisystem organ failure. He was experiencing severe ascites and third spacing to such a degree that his sides around his chest were “woody.” His skin was tearing and oozing serous fluid bilaterally around his chest as his body accumulated more fluid. The ICU intensivists and nurses inevitably became empathic and were insistent on pushing for withdrawal of care. The patient’s Hispanic parents were grieving his condition of suffering and poor prognosis. However, they stated, “due to their Catholic religious beliefs they were left incapable of consenting to the withdrawal of care of their child.” In this dark and taxing environment, the nursing staff expressed feelings of being “burnt out” and emotionally drained. Many nurses refused to care for this child, and primary nursing became non-existent. The value of human dignity was challenged by the experience because I felt that I could not give him the ethical care needed and implement interventions which would improve his quality of life. Over time, I battled emotions on whether I was contributing to his prolonged suffering. I had to rely strongly on the core value of autonomy for his parents which were lamenting and needed merely my comfort, support, and availability as I held their intubated child. Together we supported their child as we watched him take his last breath. Fostering an atmosphere and environment of peace while being sensitive to the family’s health literacy was a vital key to providing efficient, quality care. Nurses require training and examination of ethical challenges they face. In a field with high turnover rate and new employees, the staff has little time to focus on ethics. I realized that there are specific times in which more technology or interventions cannot compete with the simple act of soothing patients just by directly sitting by their side and comforting them. We have to treat all patients with dignity and respect their views and belief systems. The experience taught me not to categorize or treat patients based solely on treatment plan protocols, instead of treatment needs to be individualized. I learned to be sensitive to families as it is difficult for them to come to grasp that their child is dying and that palliation is as vital as life-saving interventions at the end of life patient. In the CICU attention to the care of suffering was acknowledged after this experience. The unit implemented policies for early consultation with palliative care teams.

Nurses need to be skillfully prepared to deal with the spiritual needs of their patients (Timmins, F., Murphy, M., Neil, F., Begley, T., & Sheaf, G. 2015) and after the incident, the nurses were reeducated on spirituality. Spirituality separates itself from formal religion in that it deals with beliefs, faith, hope, attitude, and the meaning and purpose of life through reflection and appreciation outside of a particular belief system (Vachon M., Fillion L., and Achille M.,2009).

Attention to the moral of the unit staff was studied carefully, and stress relief retreats were initiated for staff members in which massage and reflection were offered. The psychological well being of the critical care team itself was evaluated. Exhaustion and an increasingly depersonalizing environment that lead to burn out was examined. Classes that stressed self-awareness by members of the critical care team essential to self-health and useful performance were offered. Education on end-of-life matters where the staff members were allowed to participate in discussions was made available. New ethical nurse-led committees were constructed to keep all staff members updated on the current dynamics of the patient and the plan of care and were shared via company email. These discussions helped communication to stay open and resolve future issues.

Jeanette Der Bedrosian Nursing is hard. Unaddressed ethical issues make it even harder. retrieved from URL https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2015/summer/nursing-ethics-and-burnout/ Links to an external site.

Shaw H. and Degazon C. Integrating the core professional values of nursing: A Profession, not just a career. J of Cult Divers. 2008 Spring; 15 (1): 44-50. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3249847/#__ffn_sectitle Links to an external site.

Timmins, F., Murphy, M., Neil, F., Begley, T., & Sheaf, G. (2015). An exploration of the extent of inclusion of spirituality and spiritual care concepts in core nursing textbooks. Nurse Educ.Today, 35 (1), 277. doi: 10.1016/j.nedt.2014.05.008

Vachon M, Fillion L, Achille M. A conceptual analysis of spirituality at the end of life. J Palliat Med.2009 Jan; 12 (1):53-9. doi: 10.1089/jpm.2008.0189.

NR 500 Week 2 Discussion: Knowing Self