Standard 3: Maintaining Capability for Practice

AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency) regulate midwives, students together with registered nurses of Australia to ensure that the public is protected according to the section of national registration and accreditation scheme (Cusack, 2017). The two chosen registered nurse standards include standard 3 which is “maintains the capability for practice” along with standard 6 which is “provide safe, appropriate and responsive quality nursing practice”.

To start with, standard 3 has been important in the field of nursing because registered nurses are responsible and answerable in making sure that they are safe and have the ability for practice which has made health facilities to improve in their medical services. The standard aims at providing education along with information through the registered nurses to individuals so that they can make decisions and take actions for their well-being (Grace  & DRN, 2017). This is achieved via evaluation and promotion of health literacy together with developing and using resources from relevant sources to support positive and informed attitude on health (Dawson-Rose et al., 2016). Moreover, these registered nurses are responsible for their professional advancement and also strive in development contribution to the development of other professionals (Grace  & DRN, 2017).

Registered nurses recognize learning requirements via critical reflection and work towards inscribing shortage in self-restraint nursing understanding and expertise (Potter, Perry, Stockert & Hall, 2016). Moreover, they show dedication to expanding and keeping expertise and understanding in the nursing specialty through active participation in continuing professional development operations. The standard allow registered nurses to be answerable to etiquette, decisions, deeds along with tasks inherent in their contribution and for the efforts of others to whom they have assigned obligations. Therefore, registered nurses handle nursing practices according to professional anticipations and the nursing or midwifery codes of ethics (Potter, Perry, Stockert & Hall, 2016). Through this, future nursing practice becomes more effective and the many errors made concurrently become minimal.  

In this standard, registered nurses have the role to solicit together with reacting to practice review and response. In this case, they identify personal and acquaintance’s needs for questioning and promoting to preserve health to practice to meet the needs of people. Also, they seek response from patients and colleagues associated with the quality of practice and absorb the response along with establishing attainable professional objectives to continually enhance nursing understanding, expertise together with practice quality (Hewitt, Chreim & Forster, 2017).  

Roles and Responsibilities of Registered Nurses in Maintaining Capability for Practice

The relationship between the standard and the future is that when registered nurses help other health professionals in developing their contribution in the practice it will greatly impact the future nursing practice in that they will have perfected in their areas and avoid any mistakes committed in case of lack of knowledge. Also, people who acquire the health education from the registered nurses will not later depend on health professionals to know their problems but they will be able to know the action to do after a particular issue arises.

To support the other health professionals in my clinical practice I not only encouraged them in considering furthering their education but also being willing to be flexible with schedule changes that would accommodate other nurse’s schooling needs. The encouragement was due to the condition whereby only one nurse was on the board and therefore there was the need for further education to develop their profession. In another instance, I encountered a patient who was declining to take a certain medication and the physician disagreed with the patient’s action. As an advocate of my patient who was competent and alert I had to ensure that he had the right to make decisions on their well-being and provided him with information so that he can make informed decisions and offer support.

In standard 6, Registered Nurses provide safe, appropriate and responsive quality nursing practice to the patients (Moorhead, Johnson, Maas & Swanson, 2018). This nursing practice is being achieved through the use of advanced technology whereby patients are monitored via wireless chips and sensors integrated into the blankets and into the beds to check and report back on the movement and the vital details of the patient. Moreover, registered nurses have a role of demonstrating conduct that professionally upholds the public trust along with practicing reasonable judgment and seeking the correct assistance. They acknowledge, intervene and say near misses or unfortunate incidences that can put the safety of their patient at risk (Archer et al., 2017). Through the acknowledgement, they try to identify together with establishing strategies that will avoid the same mistakes in future which might put their clients at peril.

Through the health literacy evaluations of family members to the patient, Registered Nurses develop and deliver health care messages along with facilitating parenting groups to advance social networks, social support, and health literacy (Wiener, Weaver, Bell & Sansom-Daly, 2015). The health literacy will help people in future to understand their health and be able to figure out its causes and how they could contribute in handling the problem. Also, families are assisted in identifying the needs of the patient considering their growth and development, health and wellness. Here, registered nurses enable families to give responsive and sensitive parenting, developing parenting capacity and developing protective factors together with building resilience..

Standard 6: Providing Safe, Appropriate, and Responsive Quality Nursing Practice

Registered Nurses explore and challenge the attitude and behaviors of some of the family members belonging to the patient which are not conducive to the health of the patient together with those that can be harmful. By doing this, the patients will be protected from negative reasoning of his family concerning his health which might deteriorate his health even if the medication given is proper. The standard has been essential in the sense that it also engages multidisciplinary teams and community associates to build the social capital of the community along with sustaining and developing the health of the family. Registered nurses contribute to safe and high-quality healthcare by monitoring the status of the patient’s well-being, providing education and support to both the patient and the family together with supervising other nursing teams (Carlsson, Carlsson, Prenkert & Svantesson, 2016). Every healthcare facility monitors what their patients encounter daily so that they can be able to evaluate and identify the strategies that can be put in place so that the quality of care they deliver can be improved and even for the good of the future nursing practice (Wang, Kung & Byrd, 2018).

The standard will be related to the future nursing practice in the sense that as the population continues to get older individuals will need dedicated and qualified health professionals to meet the needs of their well-being. Nursing will then be a fundamental role in endorsing well-being along with keeping them well and supporting them during their sickness. In my clinical nursing experience I encountered a patient whom I was preparing for a surgery. I did not assume the patient had certain skills or not on health but I took the opportunity to educate the patient on what he would experience before, during and after the surgery which would give him the knowledge about the processes he would undergo. In another scenario, a patient was admitted to the ICU with severe respiratory distress and had diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease two years ago. His son was taking care of him at home until his health worsened. When he arrived on the unit his son walked in giving me orders and aggressively asking me why I did not conduct particular tests. He also yelled at me telling me that I did not know what I was doing and requested her to step outside so that I can get his father stabilized and settled as quickly as possible. His attitude and behavior could have worsened his dad’s health and hence had to get out.

Conclusion:

AHPRA registered nurse standards help in the provision of safe, appropriate and responsive quality nursing practice. Registered nurses achieve the safety of their patients by identifying, reporting and correcting near misses. Furthermore, they maintain capability in practice by participating in the development of their colleagues’ contribution and this helps them improve in their practice. These standards protect the well-being of people, health professionals and even the community.

References:

Archer, S., Hull, L., Soukup, T., Mayer, E., Athanasiou, T., Sevdalis, N., & Darzi, A. (2017). Development of a theoretical framework of factors affecting patient safety incident reporting: a theoretical review of the literature. BMJ Open, 7(12), e017155.

Carlsson, E., Carlsson, A. A., Prenkert, M., & Svantesson, M. (2016). Ways of understanding being a healthcare professional in the role of a family member of a patient admitted to hospital. A phenomenographic study. International journal of nursing studies, 53, 50-60.

Cusack, L. (2017). Nurse and midwife support: National health support service now available. Australian Midwifery News, 17(2), 12.

Dawson-Rose, C., Cuca, Y. P., Webel, A. R., Báez, S. S. S., Holzemer, W. L., Rivero-Méndez, M., … & Reyes, D. (2016). Building trust and relationships between patients and providers: An essential complement to health literacy in HIV care. Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, 27(5), 574-584.

Grace, P. J., & DRN, P. (Eds.). (2017). Nursing ethics and professional responsibility in advanced practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Hewitt, T., Chreim, S., & Forster, A. (2017). Sociocultural factors influencing incident reporting among physicians and nurses: understanding frames underlying self-and peer-reporting practices. Journal of patient safety, 13(3), 129-137.

Jones, J., Winch, S., Strube, P., Mitchell, M., & Henderson, A. (2016). Delivering compassionate care in intensive care units: nurses’ perceptions of enablers and barriers. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(12), 3137-3146.

Moorhead, S., Johnson, M., Maas, M. L., & Swanson, E. (2018). Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC)-E-Book: Measurement of Health Outcomes. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Potter, P. A., Perry, A. G., Stockert, P., & Hall, A. (2016). Fundamentals of Nursing-E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Wang, Y., Kung, L., & Byrd, T. A. (2018). Big data analytics: Understanding its capabilities and potential benefits for healthcare organizations. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 126, 3-13.

Wiener, L., Weaver, M. S., Bell, C. J., & Sansom-Daly, U. M. (2015). Threading the cloak: palliative care education for care providers of adolescents and young adults with cancer. Clinical oncology in adolescents and young adults, 5, 1.