Accountability And Professionalism In Nursing Associate Practice

Introduction:

In nursing practice, nursing professionals must uphold their moral and ethical values, professional accountability and integrity and good professional behaviour (Drach‐Zahavy and Srulovici, 2019). This reflective essay will determine the principles, values, policies, and professional behaviour that are associated with effective nursing practices and teamwork. In this context, this reflective essay will first define self-awareness, teamwork, professional behaviour, self-leadership, values, and professional responsibilities related to the nursing profession. Then this essay will reflect on the own roles of nursing associates in complying with the standard and principles of the Code of Conduct (NMC, 2018) in terms of maintaining transparency in nursing practices to protect the public. This reflective essay will also set an action plan by representing the smart goal in terms of developing own professional skills and knowledge for developing self-leadership skills. Finally, this essay will present a suitable conclusion, in which it recommends the strategies for professional development in the nursing field which enables nursing associates to improve their professional skills and abilities.

The selection of this topic, “professional accountability in nursing practice’ is highly relevant in modern nursing practice which will enable modern nursing associate students to conduct a systematic and effective professional development. In the modern nursing profession, it is important to improve the ability of nursing associate students for upholding their professional accountability, responsibility, professional values, and integrity to deliver a high-quality performance. This topic is best suited to the modern context of the nursing profession in which nursing professionals face a critical situation in their workplace that interferes with their ability to comply with health and social care regulations thereby interfering with their professional integrity. This reflective essay will reflect on the self-awareness, self-leadership development and professional development of nursing associate students which will support the modern nursing students to follow the right action plan to improve their professional abilities and detect their limitations.

Context:

Self-awareness:

Self-awareness is one of the most important learning processes for nursing associates which enables them to grab an in-depth understanding of their thoughts, feelings, attitude, beliefs, and decisions. Self-awareness is highly important for me as a nursing associate student, for not only improving my ability to know myself but also to know the thoughts and perspectives of other people surrounding me (Perry et al., 2018). Under The Code of Conduct (NMC, 2018), Self-awareness enables nursing associates to determine their strengths, weakness, skills, and abilities. Moreover, self-awareness is highly crucial for improving the competency of nursing associates in promoting the high level of professional development which is required to deliver high quality and compassionate care to patients. There are two major types of self-awareness such as external and internal.

As mentioned by Srulovici and Drach-Zahavy (2017), internal self-awareness is associated with understanding own personal strengths, beliefs, behaviour, thoughts, and attitudes thereby promoting own professional development. Internal self-awareness is fundamental to making a continuous development plan (CDP) for nursing associates in which they can be involved in a lifelong process of determining their strengths and limitation thereby shaping their abilities to maintain their professional accountability and integrity (NMC, 2018).

External self-awareness is the learning process in which nursing associates can understand the viewpoints, perspectives, thoughts, and decisions of other people. As mentioned by Porter-O'Grady (2019), external self-awareness is also crucial for nursing associates as it helps them to listen to and understand what their colleagues and seniors think regarding any work-related context.

Professional behaviour is an important characteristic feature of nursing associates (Barnable et al. 2018). For me, it is crucial to develop impressive professional behaviour which would enable me to maintain a healthy and trustworthy relationship with my colleagues and clients. Professional behaviour in nursing is associated with showing the right attitude, good thoughts right decision making, and respectful behaviour for people and respect for the values and opinions of other people. Nursing associates must develop proper professional behaviour which enables them to maintain a high level of professionalism in care delivery, interaction with colleagues and seniors and work process.

Professional values:

Professional values in nursing can be defined as Codes of Conducts (NMC, 2018) and principles that nursing associates need to implement in their practices to maintain their professional integrity and accountability towards their profession. Being a nursing associate, I must comply with and implement different nursing values such as effective communication responsiveness, learning, respect, punctuality, transparency, ethics, patient’s autonomy, human dignity and health and safety (Bell, 2021). By implementing all these professional values into practice, nursing associates would be able to maintain good professionalism in performing all their roles and providing high-quality care to patients.

Teamwork:

Teamwork is another important aspect of the nursing field, which is associated with collaborative working. As a nursing associate student, I need to develop teamwork skills in terms of working synergistically with my team members (Davis and Richardson, 2017). The modern nursing associate must develop good teamwork skills which enable them to adapt themselves to a different team. Teamwork skills help modern nursing associates to be involved in shared decision making and collaborative working process in which they can discuss any kind of patients' health-related issues, disease management, treatment-related topics, and professional development related aspects.

Self-leadership:

Self-leadership is one of the most important characteristics features of nursing associates which involves directing the individual towards the right professional direction (Salehmoghaddam et al. 2017). Self-leadership is crucial for me to make the right decision in critical situations thereby maintaining professionalism and integrity throughout my performance.

Discussion:

a. Self-awareness in nursing:

Self-awareness can be defined as the way of understanding own emotion feeling, thoughts, decision making and preferences (Setoodegan et al. 2019). Being a nursing associate student self-awareness is crucial to improve my professional development. During this nursing practice, I have undergone the self-awareness test. The result of this test shows that although I am doing okay in terms of conducting my professional development, I need to work more on understanding and controlling my emotion as they can pose negative impacts on others. The self-awareness test also shows that I can face trouble in managing and controlling my emotion while facing any critical situation in my workplace. As mentioned by Wright (2019), self-awareness is not just something to understand one’s feelings, thoughts, and perspectives but to develop the ability to manage own distressing emotions. In the nursing field, nursing associates can face the manifold situation in which they need to hold their patience and take the right decision rather than flowing to the emotion and making errors. This is awareness test points out my strengths which are my willingness of doing better in the professional field and my aspiration for continuous professional development (Gamble and Ion, 2017). By using this aspiration, I can improve my self-awareness skill which enables me to improve my ability to deal with any kind of emotional and critical situation by taking the right decision. This is self-awareness test determined that my weakness are poor decision-making skills, lack of proper problem-solving skills nervousness in a critical situation and lack of control over emotions.

Self-awareness means a lot to me as a nursing associate student which in turn would promote my professional development in so many ways. Self-awareness can assist me to determine my professional strengths and limitations. As mentioned by Mukinda et al. (2020), self-awareness is a lifelong learning process that enables nursing associates to determine their professional and personal skills, abilities, and areas of improvement. By determining the above-mentioned strengths and limitations by conducting the self-awareness test, I can recognise the areas in which I need to work more to conduct good professional development. Moreover, self-awareness is important for me to recognise my thoughts, perspectives, choices, decisions, emotions, and biases (Panneerselvam, 2017). Through developing good self-awareness skills, the nursing associate student can improve their ability to maintain transparency in their work and conduct a high level of professionalism in care delivery. Moreover, self-awareness also enables me to improve my self-regulation ability, manage my stress, hold my patience level in any critical situation, show sensitivity towards others and maintain trustworthy relations with others (Ierano et al. 2019). Most importantly, self-awareness skill is important for me as a nursing associate student to garb an in-depth understating of the decision perspectives and choices of my patients which is important to determine their holistic needs.

b. Key values, principles, and professional behaviours in nursing:

Every nursing associate must uphold professional behaviour, values, and principles in terms of maintaining professional accountability towards the nursing profession (Cohen et al. 2020). Being a nursing associate student, I always develop good professional behaviour that enables me to respect my colleague and seniors and maintain a healthy and trustworthy relationship with them. All nursing associates must maintain a high level of professional accountability in their profession and comply with all the statutory regulations and principles to maintain good professionalism in their work. Through developing professional behaviour and upholding the principles and values throughout my practices, I always respond confidently and autonomously to uncertain and unplanned situations and manage the situation by implementing the right decision-making ability and good problem-solving skills (Maria et al. 2020). Throughout my practices as a nursing associate student, I try my level best to comply with all the Codes of Conduct (NMC, 2018), to maximize my opportunities for improving services. I also follow and implement the NMC (2018) codes into my practice to ensure that I show enough sensitivity towards others and listen to their opinion. While exploring the professional values, professional behaviour, and professional accountability during my practices I also respect the diversity in culture, perspectives, and background of patients (Huber and Gärtner, 2018). I also ensure that I always show a respectful and polite attitude and gesture towards my colleagues and seniors. Being a nursing associate student, I need to develop good professional behaviour and the ability to implement the values, principles into practice as it will enable me to become a highly professional future nursing associate. Furthermore, this ability to show good professional behaviour will guide me in future to develop a good and heath therapeutic relationship with my patients. As mentioned by Lillejord and Børte (2020), nursing associates must develop good and effective communication skills as part of their professional behavioural development. For me developing good communication skills is a crucial proficiency that will enable me to maintain transparent information delivery in my workplace as a future nursing associate. On the other hand, professional behavioural development will enable me to conduct empathetic and sensitive communication with patients to provide them with proper psychological and emotional support. By complying with the NMC Codes of Conducts (NMC, 2018), I can improve my ability in upholding my professional values, nursing ethics and merle throughout my work process.

c. Role of a student nursing associate in ensuring protecting the public within nursing practice.

Nursing associates must ensure public protection during their practices as an important part of professional behaviour. Being a nursing associate student, I have played crucial roles in assisting my team members to ensure a high; level of safety and protection of the public (Ryan, 2017). Under the NMC Code (2018), Nursing associates must be accountable for ensuring the health and safety of the public thereby promoting their protection from any health issues of contagious disease. As a nursing associate student, I work collaboratively with statutory and private social and healthcare staff to educate the public regarding diseases prevention and health management. I have played crucial roles in educating the public regarding how to manage healthy habits such as good foods, healthy feeding habits, regular health checkups and systemic lifestyle. As mentioned by Perry et al. (2018), nursing associates must work in association with doctors, seniors nursing professionals and social care staff to determine and support the health needs of the public. Throughout my practices, I support the needs of families and individuals regarding providing poor health care information, free medicines, and advice in terms of improving their health and wellbeing (Ryan, 2017). Being a nursing associate student, I assist my team members to provide the right information regarding any contagious diseases in the community such as Covid-19 and AIDS, thereby promoting health and safety. I also work with senior nursing staff associated with supporting people with developing self-management skills. As mentioned by Bak et al. (2020), self-management skills are crucial for having the skill and knowledge in managing own health and wellbeing.

Being a nursing associate student, I always ensure that all health and social care resources are available at times of a health crisis. For example, during this COVID 19 pandemic, I work with my colleagues in terms of providing the right guidance and health advice to the public for protecting them from this pandemic attack (Ghasemi et al. 2019). I also work in a multidisciplinary team with the pharmacist, doctors, nursing professionals and psychiatrists which enables them to discuss any public health issues and their prevention. Teamwork is an important professional behaviour for nursing associate students in terms of ensuring public protection. Throughout my practices, I have worked with various teams, which enables me to learn how to implement my professional integrity and accountability towards ensuring the health and safety of the public. In this context, I am involved in the shared decision-making process, which enables me to discuss the strategies that can be implemented in building a healthy society (Ryan, 2017). I always show a helpful and polite approach towards people while they come to me for any healthcare queries and healthcare guidance. I always provide the right and relevant healthcare information to the public which is essential for promoting their holistic wellbeing.

d. Self-leadership in nursing:

Professional accountability is strongly associated with the ability of nursing associates to develop good self-leadership and management skills (Ghasemi et al. 2019). As mentioned by Perry et al. (2018), leadership is the skill to direct team members to use the right strategies and techniques to achieve the common organizational goals. Self-leadership can be considered as the personal skill that enables a person to achieve a personal goal by using the right techniques and skills. In the nursing field, self-leadership is highly important for nursing associates to use the strategies and work in the right direction which enables them to archive their personal goals. Self-leadership enables nursing associates to take their own decisions and make the right choices in their professional field. Being a nursing associate student, self-leadership is highly crucial for me to improve my decision-making skills, problem-solving ability and crisis management skills (Ghasemi et al. 2019). By using my self-leadership skills, I can take the right and relevant decisions in my workplace and dedicate my intelligence to achieving nursing goals. Aside from the achievement of common organizational goals, this self-leadership skill enables me to become a good person in my workplace, which can maintain a healthy and highly professional relationship with colleagues and patients.

For developing effective self-leadership skills, I have developed an action plan under which I have set some SMART goals (Ryan, 2017). One of these SMART goals is developing good verbal communication skills. Verbal communication is one of the most important aspects of developing self-leadership skills. Nursing associates must develop the ability to make effective clear verbal communication with their colleagues and clients which enables them to share information, gives feedback regarding any care-related aspects and discuss any workplace situation. For developing this verbal communication I will learn many online and offline books on how to develop effective verbal communication skills. I will make initiatives in attending the discussion between my colleagues regarding any workplace-related aspect (Perry et al. 2018). I will also observe my senior associates and health professionals learn how they interact and communicate with different colleagues and patients.

Another goal under my SMART action plan is to develop written communication skills self-leadership is also strongly associated with developing written communication skills. Modern nursing associates must have well-written communication skills which enable the nurse to make a clear case study of patients or form accurate health records of patients of developing the work schedule on daily basis (Lillejord and Børte, 2020). I would develop this written communication skill by attending the online courses for written communication in which I can learn different modern ways about how to develop sentences, grammatical use and case study formation I will also observe my seniors and doctors learn what strategies they use to make a clear and effective written communication with colleagues and patients.

I will also develop my leadership and management skill in terms of developing good self-leadership skills. Self-leadership is strongly associated with the ability to manage and lead the team members. Nursing associates who have good leadership and management skill can easily lead their own personal goals in the right ways to achieve personal objectives. For developing leadership and management, I will work for different teams and use my decision making and probe solving skills to take part in solving any issues within the team. I will also take the initiatives to lead the team members in the right way to achieve tote nursing goals. I will also observe the leadership behaviour of my seniors and colleagues to improve leadership and management skill.

Conclusion:

Summary:

From the above-mentioned discussion, it can be concluded that nursing associate students must undergo continuous professional development which enables them to improve their ability to comply with the NMC codes of conduct. The nursing associate must develop the ability to uphold their professional values, professional accountability, ethics, professional behaviour, and integrity. In the modern nursing field, every nursing associate must be enough accountable for what they do in their workplace. They must maintain a high level of professionalism while working with their colleague and clients. They also develop self-awareness, self-leadership, values, professional behaviour, and teamwork skill in terms of improving the competency in providing high standard care to patients and maintaining professional integrity in their work.

Recommendation:

From the above discussion, it can be recommended that nursing associate students should develop good verbal and written communication skills which enables them to maintain high levels of professionalism in their work. Nursing associates should develop a go professional behaviour which enables them to show respectful ad polite gestures to their colleagues, seniors, and clients for understating the client’s needs, nursing associates should develop good critical thinking, reasoning, and decision-making skills, which will enable them to recognize and respond to the health needs as well as health declines of clients.

Reference list:

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Bell, B., 2021. White dominance in nursing education: A target for anti‐racist efforts. Nursing Inquiry, 28(1), p.e12379.

Cohen, R., Gesser-Edelsburg, A., Singhal, A., Benenson, S. and Moses, A.E., 2020. What distinguishes positive deviance (PD) health professionals from their peers and what impact does a PD intervention have on behaviour change: a cross-sectional study of infection control and prevention in three Israeli hospitals. Epidemiology & Infection, 148.

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Drach‐Zahavy, A. and Srulovici, E., 2019. The personality profile of the accountable nurse and missed nursing care. Journal of advanced nursing, 75(2), pp.368-379.

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Maria, H.S.Y., Mei, W.L. and Stanley, L.K.K., 2020. The transition challenges faced by new graduate nurses in their first year of professional experience. GSTF Journal of Nursing and Health Care (JNHC), 5(1).

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Perry, C., Henderson, A. and Grealish, L., 2018. The behaviours of nurses that increase student accountability for learning in clinical practice: An integrative review. Nurse education today, 65, pp.177-186.

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Appendix: A

Smart goals:

Appendix:B

Explanation of the SMART Goals:

For developing an effective self-leadership skills, I have developed an action plan under which I have set some SMART goals (Ryan, 2017). One of these SMART goals is developing a good verbal communication skill. Verbal communication is one of the most important aspect of developing self-leadership skills. Nursing associates must develop the ability to make an effectives cleat verbal communication with their colleagues and clients which enables them to share information, gives feedback regarding any care related aspects and discuss any workplace situation. For developing this verbal communication I will learn many online and offline books on how to develop an effective verbal communication skill. I will make initiatives in attending the discussion between my colleagues regarding any workplace related aspect (Perry et al. 2018). I will also observe my seniors associates and health professionals to learn how they interact and communicate with different colleagues and patients.

Another goals under my SMART action plan is develop written communicate skill self-leadership is also strongly associated with developing the written communication skill. A modern nursing associates must have good written communication skill which enables the nurse to make a clear case study of patient, or form the accurate health records of patients of develop the work schedule on daily basis (Lillejord and Børte, 2020). I would develop this written communication skill by attending the online courses for written communication in which I can learn different modern ways about how to develop sentence, grammatical use and case study formation I will also observe my seniors and doctors to learn what strategies the use to make a clear and effective written communication with colleagues and patients.

I will also develop my leadership and management skill in terms of developing a good self-leadership skill. The self-leadership is strongly associated with the ability to manage and lead the team members. Nursing associates who have good leadership and management skill, can easily lead their own personal goals in the right ways to achieve personal objectives. For developing the leadership and management, I will work I different team and use my decision making and probe solving skill to take part in solving any issues within the team. I will also take initiatives to lead the team members in right way to achieve tote nursing goals. I will also observes the leadership behavior of my seniors and colleagues to improve leadership and management skill.

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