Elements of Professional Nursing at HSHS St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center
Caring
- Caring involves the protection, enhancement, and preservation of human dignity.
- Caring is being the patient/family advocate and promoting patient/family satisfaction with care.
- Caring requires from me a personal, professional, social, moral, ethical, and spiritual engagement.
- Caring is a knowledgeable, deliberative intervention, not an emotional response.
- Nurses need to learn, understand, acknowledge, and integrate in practice the values, beliefs, and habits of diverse cultural and sub-cultural orientations.
- Nurses need to care for and support one another as they care for their patients.
- There is a place for humor in health care and healing.
Accountability
- Nurses are accountable to the patient/family, the health care team, the organization, and myself.
- Accountability includes developing and maintaining current nursing knowledge and skills through formal and continuing education and, where appropriate, seeking certification in my area of practice.
- Accountability embraces practice based upon the profession’s code of ethics, standards of practice and legal regulations.
- Competency is inherent in the practice of nursing and includes awareness of my own limitations.
- Nursing is accountable for evidence base and supports positive clinical outcomes.
Communication
- Creating an environment that supports effective, respectful, and honest communication.
- Applying therapeutic communication relevant to the beliefs and value system of those receiving care.
- The effectiveness of the nurse and patient/family relationship is dependent upon the ability to collaborate with all members of the health-care team.
- Communication includes supporting relationships with colleagues through respectful, clear, accurate, and timely written and verbal communication.
Learning/Teaching
- Critical thinking skills must be applied to assess, plan, implement, and evaluate care specific to the individuality of those receiving care.
- The learning-teaching process is an ongoing, dynamic, interpersonal process whereby both the learner and teacher grow.
- The nurse facilitates health promotion, maintenance, and optimal health functioning.
Management/Leadership
- The patient/family is at the center of all decision making.
- Management and leadership skills are essential elements of nursing practice through which nurses’ offer and deliver high quality health care to individuals, families, groups, and communities.
- Leadership includes being accountable for maximizing resources in the delivery of patient care.
- Leadership skills involve self-reflection, understanding human processes, and envisioning possibilities for enriching people’s lives.