Meeting Essential VIII: Professionalism and Professional Values

The Professionalism and Professional Values Essential is one of the nine Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice. Nurses acquire the essential by ensuring the registered nurses seeking to be graduates of Bachelor of Science in Nursing receive the appropriate training. For instance, the essential recommends that the students should acquire values like autonomy, altruism, integrity, human dignity, and social justice (The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice, 2012).

A Demonstration of the Professional Standards of Moral, Ethical, and Legal Conduct

Essential VIII recommends a wide range of professional nursing standards of moral, ethical, and legal conduct. For instance, nurses are accountable for all the ethical responsibilities and legal liabilities during clinical decisions and nursing interventions. Also, nurses are required to offer a healthy and safe environment for patients. This is attained by conducting accurate and effective duties, being timely, and keeping proper records of the care provided. Moreover, the professional standards require nurses to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of patients. In the case of professional errors that might damage a patients health, the nurses are required to detect and report them instantly (Flinders, 2013). Additionally, an honest explanation to a patient is required in situations where mistakes are made.

My Effectiveness at Meeting Essential VIII and its Impact on my Career

Being a registered nurse, my effort to meet Essential VIII in the BSN program is attainable. This is due to my background of having interacted with patients in various healthcare systems. For instance, I acted as an intermediary between patients families and the doctors. Also, I gained sufficient knowledge concerning physicians advice to patients, the condition of patients, and the treatment involved. Additionally, my urge to improve my leadership ability, expand my perspective of the present clinical practice, and to improve my basic education, made me embrace the requirements of Essential VIII. As such, in future, I will be accountable for all my professional and personal behaviours and communicate any chances of personal bias during challenging healthcare decisions. Moreover, I will be able to identify the environmental, professional, and personal risks that might affect professional and personal behaviours and choices. Furthermore, my proficiency in Essential VIII will help me to identify the effect of expectations, attitudes, and values on the delivery of care to the old, young, and other vulnerable people. Similarly, I will work by protecting the privacy of the patient, and avert the illegal, unsafe, and unethical healthcare practices.

How I met Essential VIII

I was able to meet Essential VIII by gaining an understanding of the legal, historical, and contemporary professional requirements of the nursing practice. The BSN program has enabled me to care for patients at risk and assist them in making decisions through the opportunity to gain hands-on experiences with families and clients. Moreover, Essential VIII requires nurses to conduct altruism, which I have acquired by advocating for the welfare of the patients I interacted with during my practice. Also, I attained autonomy as needed by the essential by upholding the rights of the patients to information before making any clinical decision. By valuing my patients and colleagues, I am deemed to have adhered to the essential by enhancing human dignity. Finally, I met the essential by realising that social justice is significant and every individual should be treated equally.

Connections between Academic Experiences and Real-World Applications

The academic experiences during the nursing theory classes are based on evidence-based research and holistic teaching. This is also the case in the real applications by nurses who employ evidence-based research while handling patients. As such, up-to-date clinical recommendations are used leading to ethical outcomes. Similarly, the program recommends that students should not only focus on implementing orders and focusing on the patients disease, but also cater to their spiritual and emotional needs. Hence, a connection exists as the nurses are required to cater for the patient as a whole, and not just on their disease. Through group assignments and the use of teamwork, the academic experiences impact the significance of interacting and communicating among the students. Therefore, their transformation into the real-world is easy as the nurses require to interact and communicate with their colleagues.

References

Flinders, B. (2013). Using The Baccalaureate Essentials To Generate Context: Assessment Of An Innovative Approach (2nd Ed.). Miami University. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1073196.pdf

The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice. (2012) (2nd Ed.). Washington. http://www.aacn.nche.edu/education-resources/BaccEssentials08.pdf