Almost every profession has its cultural peculiarities that are unique to each field of professional activity. Such characteristics include specific vocabulary, body language, behavioral patterns, ethics, rules, values, and many others. All of these are more or less present in each profession. In this paper, specific patterns of nursing group culture will be described and analyzed.
In public opinion, the nursing profession is the one that requires the most care for the customer. Therefore, the need to pay attention to specific professional customs arises. For example, the language that nursing practitioners use in their line of duty is extremely particular regarding profession’s aspects. However, most of the nursing profession’s cultural features are connected to communicating with the patient.
In an article by Hoeve, Jansen and Roodbol, the authors state that the public image of the nurses is “predominantly based on misconceptions and stereotypes, which find their origins in distorted images of nurses in the media” (p. 299). Therefore, one can argue that it is impossible to precisely describe nurses’ profession aspects without possessing the required amount of knowledge and experience. In turn, those are only possible to acquire by having a professional education and working as a nurse.
Needless to say, that nurse profession requires education and professional skills. It becomes even more so when a nurse wants to continue in the profession. Further education will be the more in-depth and sophisticated, the more a nurse desires to proceed in the career. Furthermore, there is lots of equipment that is required to perform nurse’s duties successfully. To use this equipment is also almost impossible without having specific knowledge about its functions and components.
“The values and beliefs associated with what it means to be a nurse are either further developed or abandoned after the commencement of employment” as stated in research performed by Manojlovich and Ketefian (2016, p. 19). The assumption that personal beliefs and values may not only settle in a nurse but also permanently vanish is connected to the fact that nurses face a lot of stress in their line of duty. Moreover, the pressure comes from different sources. There will always be dissatisfied and mean-spirited patients, and there will always be a need to deal with bureaucracy. Both of these aspects of nurse profession create a highly hazardous environment for one’s mental health and personal well-being.
Therefore, it is evident that strict regulations and the highly variable compound of the customers do not promote an increase in positive beliefs and values. There is always a risk for every nurse to lose their face or to become stiff and harsh. This may lead either to an aggravation of communication between a nurse and client or to a complete loss of every necessary trait that nurses must have.
To summarize, the profession of a nurse requires a lot from those who wish to perform well in this line of duty. Not only is it hard to get a proper education but it is also hard to stay professional and keep up with all of hazards that come naturally with this kind of activity. Possible encounters with dissatisfied and simply aggressive patients, extreme amounts of required bureaucratic work and many other factors lead to the risk of losing what it takes to be a nurse. Therefore, the professional culture of nurse practitioners always has to rely on the group culture to ensure that the fitting environment is created and the professional activities are carried out in full.
References
Hoeve, Y., Jansen, G., & Roodbol, P. (2014). The nursing profession: public image, self-concept and professional identity. A discussion paper. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 70(2), 295-302.
Manojlovich, M., & Ketefian, S. (2016). The effects of organizational culture on nursing professionalism: Implications for health resource planning. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research Archive, 33(4), 15-34.