Assignment 1: Nursing Competencies, Definition, and Professionalism Student learning objectives: • Identify and describe the 5 core competencies for all healthcare professionals. • Identify the 6 professional characteristics of Nursing as described by the ANA in 2003. • Discuss issues related to defining nursing • Explain the meaning of caring to nursing • Describe the relationship of theory to nursing and to critical nursing theories Due in the dropbox. Develop a professional paper, using APA format with a minimum of three scholarly references (your text book may be one reference), fully addressing the following: Use the emboldened words for your APA headings. i.e., for #1 below, use the heading “Five Core Competencies.” Your paper will be 4-5 double-spaced pages (not counting title page and reference page). Answer the following in a scholarly, APA paper: 1. Identify and describe the Five core competencies for all healthcare professionals. 2. Identify the listed professional characteristics of Nursing as described by the ANA in the textbook or ANA website.nursingworld.org/nursingstandards”>Professional Standards 3. Consider the definition of nursing developed by the American Nurses Association (ANA), “the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, communities, and populations” (2004, p. 7)..nursingworld.org/EspeciallyForYou/What-is-Nursing”>ANA Definition. Discuss the meaning of any 3 of the following terms found in this definition: Promotion of health, health, prevention of illness and injury, illness, injury, diagnosis, human response, treatment, advocacy. 4. List a minimum of five actions demonstrating how the nurse-patient relationship can make a difference when the nurse uses caring consciously. From your list, provide one example illustrating how you’ve implemented this in your practice. 5. Reflecting on the four domains of a nursing philosophy (review Chapter 2 of text) develop your own personal definition of nursing. The following are ideas to reflect on in the process of defining your own personal beliefs, you shouldn’t list and answer each one in your paper but include in a short overall summary statement of your nursing philosophy. (#5 should only be one paragraph), just use the below points to help you write your philosophy • What is your central belief about the individual person? What makes up a person, who they are and how they got to where they are? • • What constitutes the environment? Does it include elements both external and internal? Give examples. Find out what internal/external environments are and how the person interacts with them. A good source for this information is Chitty and Black “Professional Nursing Concepts and Challenges” 6th edition, or Google search should give you direction on this • • How do the individual and the environment interact? Think about how you view health. Chapter 5 of Finkelman or the Chitty book mentioned above will give you a basic understanding but you will need to expand upon this. • • What is your view of health? What is health and how is illness related to health? Is health a continuum with absolutes at either end, is it a dichotomy: either good or bad? Is it a state that includes illness? Note that disease and illness is not the same thing. One can have a disease and not be ill, and one can be ill and not have a disease. • • What is the central reason for the existence of nursing? Why are we, as nurses, here? Don’t think of this as a task based definition. Why do you get up every day and go to work? How do we do what we do every day? ? Spend a little bit of time thinking about the questions provided and you will do fine! ? Don’t look for a “right” answer, this is your personal philosophy/thoughts. ? • A philosophy is very brief. Expect your answer for Question 5 to be one paragraph. APA means a title page, using headings, citations within narrative of all references and a reference page. You do not need to include an abstract. Use of first person is discouraged when writing in APA; an alternative to use includes “this author” or “one can determine…” . See the APA sample paper as a guide! “Scholarly reference” means a peer reviewed nursing journal article. More current nursing literature is in the UWF online e-library where CINAHL or OVID can be searched. Make it your first choice for searching the literature throughout the entire program. However, “Google Scholar” can be searched for articles that meet this criterion. Remember that sources should be dated less than 5-6 years old. You may use a scholarly website as long as it’s e-address is a .gov; .edu.; .org (i.e., no .com). Your writing should be succinct and directly answer the question, following the rubric as a guideline in both setting up your paper and ensuring you have answered all items.
