Keeping shape our nursing skills and knowledge. by Daniel Yanez Frau – Sunday, J

Keeping shape our nursing skills and knowledge.
by Daniel Yanez Frau – Sunday, June 5, 2022, 1:56 PM
Number of replies: 4
Nursing could be called or characterized by different distinctions but never as a static profession. The healthcare system is constantly changing in a very dynamic and massive way. Every day new technologies, procedures, medications, or other methods of treatment, evidence-based guidelines even new diseases or pathogen strains establish challenges for the health community, and especially for us, the nurses, as the first component of that professional chain. So, we must actively look to update our skills and knowledge regularly, if we want to respond to our patient’s needs and our own goals (Mlambo et al., 2021).
In our practice, we must be able to have excellent communication with patients, relatives, other members of the health team, legal professionals, etc. We must also be able to multitask, be good at observing, collecting, and processing data, documenting, and analyzing based on a good critical thinking perspective, and doing timely interventions. But to do all of that we must have developed a lot of skills, and we cannot wait for our manager or supervisor to instruct us to go and do a certain course, or to get close to renovating our nursing license and then do the CE ones (Lera et al., 2020). We must be proactive and self-evaluate our weaknesses and limitations and search for continued education, certifications, and credentials to complement those deficiencies, and we should also do it based on the challenges and daily needs we identify from our patients and community. We can volunteer in health organizations or programs to get experience. We can attend workshops (How to Improve Your Skills for Nursing | BrainWaves Blog, 2022). We must read every day and do research, and literature reviews when we face something new, or we are challenged by a dilemma. We must ask and communicate with other colleagues or get a mentor because we are not alone and other professionals can share their experiences with us about how to deal with different conditions (teamwork). We can create or be part of nurses or healthcare networks, or local organizations with common interests to keep updating our knowledge of the environment, new trends, and even solutions to questions and concerns within our community. We can pursue new degrees of nursing that with always provide us with new perspectives and tools to approach the service we provide with much better quality (How Enhancing Your Career Benefits Both Your Patients and Yourself, 2021).
The current situation the health care industry is facing is very complex due to the speed at which the challenges are created, the shortage of staff, and job stress. Still, we must keep ourselves committed to following that pace and even be prepared for what could be unexpected, and how to solve it with all the professional qualitative and quantitative instruments we can gather around us. The only way we can respond and be ready for that is by keeping actively learning. We owe that to ourselves and our community. Doing what we are doing right now by joining this Family Nurse Practitioner Program, is an excellent example of what we can do to respond to the climbing needs of our community, especially if we care about complying with the Affordable Care Act and its benefits, that we discussed in our group last week.
References
Mlambo, M., Silén, C., & McGrath, C. (2021). Lifelong learning and nurses’ continuing professional development, a metasynthesis of the literature. BMC Nursing, 20(62), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-021-00579-2
Lera, M., Taxtsoglou, K., Frantzana, A., & Kourkouta, L. (2020). Nurses’ Attitudes Toward Lifelong Learning via New Technologies. Asian/Pacific Island Nursing Journal, 5(2), 89–102. https://doi.org/10.31372/20200502.1088
How to Improve Your Skills for Nursing | BrainWaves Blog. (2022). UVM Continuing and Distance Education. https://learn.uvm.edu/blog/blog-health/skills-for-nursing
How Enhancing Your Career Benefits Both Your Patients and Yourself. (2021). ONS Voice. https://voice.ons.org/news-and-views/how-enhancing-your-career-benefits-both-your-patients-and-yourself