Nursing profession has been valued for its critical role in the provision of quality health care for the public as it applies specialized and effective knowledge and skills in ensuring health care. Nursing profession helps acquire leadership skills which helps create positive transformations in health care policy as well as delivery systems. Professional learning experience in nursing requires the use of critical thinking in making judgments. It helps expand one’s critical thinking skills which help promote professional heritage as well as identity (Chitty, & Black, 2011).
The aim of professional learning experience in nursing is to enable nurses to focus and provide healthy community-based health-care. This includes collaboration in providing preventive health care and to ensure continuity care as well as to involve family in responsible family care. It helps integrate significant community services by enriching their learning experience to strengthen communities through teaching civic responsibility in ensuring safety (Chitty, & Black, 2011).
Professional learning experience in nursing also aims at helping nurses understand their personal truths, goals as well as thoughts. This would help determine how an individual relate his or her professional nursing carrier. The nurturing characteristics that the nursing profession embraces help nurses achieve unique experiences which influence their expertise. The differences in cultures of nurses make professional nursing special. Professional learning experience in learning involves gaining experience through practical wisdom. Acquiring practical wisdom involves performing actions which are meant to enhance and preserve the health (World Health Organization, 2009).
Professional nursing also aims at taking holistic care as well as concern to patients as its main concern. Professional nursing entails advocacy in promoting healthy and safe environment as well as research participation to help outline health policy. It should also cover health systems management and should acknowledge education as part of the roles of nursing. Holistic approach to professional nursing includes providing preventing measures, detection of complications, promotion of family health care, carrying out emergency services as well as helping the public access medical care (World Health Organization, 2009).
The aim of professional learning experience is to enable successful application of nursing procedures in developing health policies. This begins with collecting evidence and data through consensus building; securing expert consensus in decision making; collecting and incorporating public comments in policy making; analyzing and synthesizing of the public responses; and finally should disseminate the information to the public (World Health Organization, 2009).
Professional learning experience should provide a process which supports provision of quality nursing care to patients. It should help establish benchmarks for evaluating and ensuring continuous quality improvements through constant nursing education. This would support nurses in obtaining professional commitment to attain lifetime learning as well as excellence.
It should be able to provide yearly reports on continuing competence process of the nurse so as to reveal accountability of the nurse in the profession. Thus the profession should be able to assess the competence of the nurse, the learning activities as well as to evaluate the performance of the nurse. The learning activities in this case involve in-service workshops, attending health related meetings among others. Evaluation should include self-assessment to enhance continuous learning cycle for nurses. Professional nursing requires continued education to ensure provision of high quality nursing care as well as to acquire new and more improved treatment techniques. Continued education should be through teaching, treatment as well as in advocating, providing and supporting patient care. Professional nursing should be aimed at enabling an individual achieve outcomes which are evidence-based and are also competent (World Health Organization, 2009).
Profession nursing requires that nurses take responsibility of providing leadership to others involved in giving care to patients so as to maintain first-class continuity care. Nurses should be more prepared and ready to accept positions which call for more leadership skills. They should be ready to apply important leadership skills in managing and coordinating teams involved in the provision of health care. Achieving professional learning in nursing should entail more training on nursing ethics as well as nursing professionalism and nursing foundations so as to promote the development of knowledge and skill necessary for organizing leadership responsibilities for managing teams successfully (Chitty, & Black, 2011).
Professional growth in nursing is enabled by choosing strong mentors. It requires that one finds a mentor who can inspire his or her personal development by associating with those who are also on the path of achieving self growth. A mentor should be able to support and encourage an individual to achieve growth. The mentor should be an experienced nurse who is always committed to his or her nursing work and is able to bring positive influence to the individual by sharing knowledge with the less experienced nurses in helping them advance their carriers. The mentor should be someone who balances similarities and differences of your strengths as well as weaknesses and should also share the same beliefs and values as you in the nursing practice (Gordon, 2000).
The mentor should be someone who is able to identify the less experienced nurses’ vulnerabilities and needs. He or she should also be culturally competent enough to meet the needs of the population. The nurse should have developed higher analytical and critical thinking skills and should also have the leadership ability to provide continual professional development to less experienced nurses. He or she should be able to communicate his or her experience openly (Gordon, 2000).
The mentor should be local and ideally be somebody in the same organization where you work. This would enable the mentor to effectively guide you in situations specific to the location of the your geographical area of work. The mentor should also have experience in your field of work or in the field where you aspire to work so as to provide more knowledge and expertise (Gordon,2000).
Reference List
Chitty, K. & Black, B. (2011). Professional nursing concepts & challenges. Maryland Heights, Missouri: Saunders Elsevier
Gordon, P. A. (2000). The road to success with a mentor, 18(1), 30-33. Cambridge, MA: Elsevier Inc.
World Health Organization. (2009). Global standards for the initial education of professional nurses and midwives. Geneva: Department of Human Resources for Health, World Health Organization.