The Importance Of Professionalism In Nursing

It is not simple to define professionalism in nursing as it really truly covers every aspect of how a nurse conducts themselves daily without restricting this purely to their professional environment. “Nurses respect the dignity, culture, ethnicity, values and beliefs of people receiving care and treatment, and of their colleagues.” (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, 2013.) Understanding the weight of this is crucial in realising the importance of professionalism in health care. Professionalism in health care is important in abiding by standards, legal obligations and maintaining accountability, and respect of nurses both individually and as a whole. As nursing includes such a broad range of environments it is important that we all maintain the same level of professionalism as an industry. Unfortunately this isn’t always upheld, as seen in the “Hamburger with the lot (K2)” (FedUni CLIPP, 2016) video. We see a display of un-professionalism in a hand over procedure. The nurse conducting the handover shows disrespectful attitudes in multiple ways including referring to the client as “a bit stinky” and makes judgements on the patients intelligence based on the patient’s social history. One particular nursing standard states that the nurse ‘is respectful of a person’s dignity, culture, values, beliefs and …show more content…
As a registered nurse part of your professional expectation is to be qualified and competent. You are dealing with peoples’ lives so these expectations are minimums. Boards of nursing are in place to regulate the industry. They have the power to ‘authorise to: discipline registered nurses as necessary to protect the public.’ (DeLaune et al, 2016). This shows that not only should professionalism be of high interest to the nurse and their career but it shows that we do have the public in our hands and they need to be protected while in nurse