Essay Sample on Roles of the Nurse

Introduction

Nursing is a career within the healthcare setting that focuses on the health of individuals by maintaining their quality life (Scott, Matthews & Kirwan, 2014). Therefore, nurses play significant roles in maintaining the health care of community members. Their services are designed to improve and enhance health. In other words, nurses are believed to poses a direct influence on the outcome of the patient (Altman, Butler & Shern, 2010). They are said to perform quite a variety of actions such as protecting, promoting and optimizing both abilities and health. However, for quite some time, the importance of the nursing profession is mostly unnoticed until something occurs which demands the attention of what they are mandated to do as the nurses. The paper explores in details the eight most important roles of the nurses.

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Caregiver

As a caregiver, a nurse offers a lot of hands- care to individuals in a variety of settings. Here their role involves doing everything to help a patient who is obsessed with illness prevention. They ascertain the satisfaction of the patient's mental and physical needs. Again, as a caregiver, the nurse is responsible for maintaining the dignity of the patient by offering knowledgeable and skilled care. For instance, they are capable of ensuring that the patient's house is clean and that the food is available at all the time (Lewis, Gaffney & Wilson, 2017).

Most importantly, as a caregiver, the nurse is responsible for transporting their clients all around to ensure they are comfortable and encouraged in their lives. Nurse as a caregiver issue a supportive atmosphere that favors the needs of all patients. For example, he/she ensures that the patient is free from pain and stress which may ruin their lives even more.

Additionally, nurses are there to care for the patient holistically. Here, the holistic care entails understanding the fact that the whole individual is higher than the summation of their parts. It means nurses are supposed to address the psychosocial, cultural and developmental needs of the patient. In general, the role of a nurse as a caregiver is to perform all tasks and skills that relate to the nursing care. Most importantly, he/she must understand other elements that build the whole person.

Advocate

Being an advocate of a patient is an essential part of all nursing roles. Therefore, as an advocate of the patient, the nurse is responsible for protecting and covering the rights of the patient. For example, when a person is ill, he/she is not able to act in usual ways just like when he/she is well. Hence, the nurse is there to act on behalf of the patient. Here, the nurses defend and support the decisions of the patient by standing up for his/her interest in all circumstances. The approach empowers the patient since he/she can recognize that the patient's values and demands supersede the entire providers of the healthcare (Choi, 2015).

More so, as an advocate, nurses links patients with an individual that they can confide in and that the patient feels that the individual is the one they can lean on in all situations. Also, a nurse as an advocate offers adequate security to patients such that they feel covered and not left alone during their hard times. Most importantly, nurses ensure that all patients are aware and enlightened about their options for the benefit of their decisions and care.

Critical Thinker

The role of critical thinking among the nurses is not direct as seen in other parts they play. However, it is vital since the nurses have to perform their responsibilities of creating hard decisions in matters related to the healthcare of the patients. Here, the nurses guide patients in making correct options and decisions concerning their health. For instance, they help patients in prescriptions and insurance aspects as well as assisting them with visitation matters. Also, nurses are responsible for making rational judgments and decisions when dealing with emergency cases that could mean the death for their client. The critical thinking among the nurses determines the health outcomes of the patients.

Furthermore, through critical thinking, the nurse is capable of anticipating changes in the conditions of the patient. Also, a nurse is set to encounter various situations that contain a multiple of solutions and come up with the best treatment solution that will improve the health condition of the client (Choi, Lindquist & Song, 2014).

Teacher

Learning is known as a long life venture. Education applies in almost all hospital rooms just as it is in other settings. As a result, health centers usually fulfill the fundamental roles of the teacher. From different perspectives, nurses teach patients in many ways. Firstly, a nurse as a teacher explains to patients how to manage their illness as well as showing them how they can treat their situations with a better approach. Most importantly, nurses educate patients on how they can maintain their health standards of living even after they are released from the medical centers.

On the other hand, as a teacher, the nurse evaluates and assesses the condition of the patients with the aim of understanding their option for treatment. Nurses can also spare their nursing experience to educate nursing students on the better skills they will need to apply when handling their future clients (Borawski et al., 2015).

Communicator

Nurses serve as the communicator of their clients in several ways. In some situations when the illness of a patient hinders him/her handle their feelings and thought physically, then the nurse intervenes. Nurses as communicators can easily relate closely to their clients such that patients can communicate their health status for medical treatment (Kako et al., 2014). Nurses also communicate essential information to the patients while still acting as the communicators of the patients when it comes to hospital staff. On the other hand, nurses manifest the highest degree of communication skills to handle and understand all parties concerning the care of the patients. Also, they keep the information open and transparent such that any member of the staff can quickly intervene to provide better health care to the patients.

Manager

Managing roles is part and parcel of nurses' jobs in both hospital and medical offices. For example, they coordinate the schedules of the patients and the time when they should attend for their medical checkups. Nurses manage all team that is responsible for handling the patients as well as the patients themselves (Niu et al., 2017). Also, they are capable of managing the family team that supports the patients, especially during visitation. They also guide and help the family members through the entire process of making decisions and opinions concerning their loved fellows under medications.

The nurse coordinates the entire healthcare process by ensuring that the goals of the patients are met. Again, the nurse is responsible for continuity when the patients enter the health unit until when he/she is discharged home. They even go ahead into overseeing further instructions from the home care. Nurses also prioritize and manage the care of multiple clients who require medication at the same time and hence adding an important dimension to the health care system.

Researcher

Nurses are responsible for ensuring that patients are comfortable all the time. Nurses research for better medicine before distributing and administering them to the patients. More so, they research on better approaches and methods of maintaining the health standards of the citizens (Judkins-Cohn et al., 2014). Continuous researches among the nurses ensure that they always remain educated in the field of their working. As a result, they are legible in answering all questions that patients highlight in their daily experiences. Through researches, nurses contribute and share their experiences with the aim of promoting health care in the community.

Rehabilitator

Nurses as rehabilitators tend to provide care to their clients under a strict supervision process. They manage and ensure that the conditions of the patients are improving daily. Also, they are responsible for ensuring that no any external factor is capable of affecting the quality of life of a patient by advocating for their better health status. Nurses help patients to cope with their healing process as well as enabling them to adapt to any changes in their lifestyles. In other words, nurses who serve as rehabilitators help patients to focus on becoming health fit again (Ali et al. 2014).

Conclusion

Nurses serve a variety of important roles in the health conditions of the society. They often keep hospitals working effectively as well as maintain better health standards for all patients. They meet their characters by fulfilling various responsibilities that emerge from being the health caregiver's principals in health settings to becoming good managers for the patients. In other words, the nurse is usually the number one individual in the eyes of the patient since they represent all patients when it comes to their care in hospitals. More so, nurses are known to the masters when it comes to multitasking, and hence their benefits should not be ignored or even taken for granted.

References

Ali, M. H., Koh, D., Collier, L., & Gobbi, M. (2014). Community stroke rehabilitation nursing and its relevance to Brunei: a review of the literature. Brunei Darussalam Journal of Health, 5, 80-87. http://ihs.ubd.edu.bn/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/2014-v5-p80.pdf

Altman, S. H., Butler, A. S., & Shern, L. (2010). Assessing progress on the Institute of Medicine report The Future of Nursing. National Academies Press.

Borawski, E. A., Tufts, K. A., Trapl, E. S., Hayman, L. L., Yoder, L. D., & Lovegreen, L. D. (2015). The effectiveness of health education teachers and school nurses teaching sexually transmitted infections/human immunodeficiency virus prevention knowledge and skills in high school. Journal of School Health, 85(3), 189-196.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/josh.12234

Choi, E., Lindquist, R., & Song, Y. (2014). Effects of problem-based learning vs. traditional lecture on Korean nursing students' critical thinking, problem-solving, and self-directed learning. Nurse education today, 34(1), 52-56.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260691713000695

Choi, P. P. (2015). Patient advocacy: the role of the nurse. Nursing Standard (2014+), 29(41), 52. https://search.proquest.com/openview/05d1a8426aba33bc22f80e186281a293/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2042228

Judkins-Cohn, T. M., Kielwasser-Withrow, K., Owen, M., & Ward, J. (2014). Ethical principles of informed consent: Exploring nurses' dual role of care provider and researcher. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing.https://www.healio.com/nursing/journals/jcen/2014-1-45-1/%7B5262a764-6bfa-4198-8e82-1ccd066272b2%7D/ethical-principles-of-informed-consent-exploring-nurses-dual-role-of-care-provider-and-researcher?version=1

Kako, M., Ranse, J., Yamamoto, A., & Arbon, P. (2014). What was the role of nurses during the 2011 Great East Earthquake of Japan? An integrative review of the Japanese literature. Prehospital and disaster medicine, 29(3), 275-279.https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/prehospital-and-disaster-medicine/article/what-was-the-role-of-nurses-during-the-2011-great-east-earthquake-of-japan-an-integrative-review-of-the-japanese-literature/39311EA5FB8675AFC55968545B95797E

Lewis, P., Gaffney, R. J., & Wilson, N. J. (2017). A narrative review of acute care nurses' experiences of nursing patients with intellectual disability: Underprepared, communication barriers and ambiguity about the role of caregivers. Journal of clinical nursing, 26(11-12), 1473-1484.https://...