Question

Describe what distinguishes your passion for nursing and identify the three most important attributes of an exemplary nurse. Explain how you will demonstrate these attributes throughout the remainder of your training and career.

500 words

Answer 1

The passion for nursing has come from the fact that we would be able to serve people and care for them in their hard times. A nurse is different from other medical personnel in being the person, who is the first point of contact in case of any problems. The nurse is the person with whom the patient would interact at first hand, followed by assessments, that would be carried out by the nurse. Also, the nurse would be the one who would be the key element and the “messenger” between the physician and the patient.

Some of the most prominent attributes of a nurse are:

- excellent communication skills: it is important that the nurse should posses great communication skills. Communication skills here do not only pertain to informing what the physician has planned but the nurse should be a good listener as well as a good speaker. Part of these communication skills are the interpersonal skills possessed by the nurses, where patients confide and trust on the nurses, because it is the nurse who will be there to care for the patient in critical scenarios.

- emotional stability: nursing is a stressful job. Yes, it is true that the patient care includes warm moments and interactions, but most times include stressful situations with life threatening conditions. The nurse has to work under pressure and be able to provide the best interventions in such pressure bound situations. Moreover, the nurse has to be stable while performing these tasks. If a nurse panics, her ability to think critically will be blocked and she would not be able to provide the best of care to the patient.

- empathy: one of the important aspects of nursing process is the ability of the nurse to feel or understand the pain that the patient is feeling. It is important to realise that the patient is not in the best of their physical conditions and thus, may be emotionally vulnerable as well. They might be in a mood that is disturbing or may be sensitive to even the slightest of the issues. Hence, it is important that the nurse should understand these aspects of patient health and treat the patient with warmth. If the nurse is not empathetic to the patient, she might not be able to up their softer side and not be able to provide care and act with compassion to the patient. Hence, empathy forms an important virtue.

In order to display these attributes, it is required that a person understands nursing process as more than a job that provides interventions to sick patients and looks at it from a different perspective. The perspective has to be more humanistic with the aim to provide a holistic care to the patients. It has to be understood that it is not only medicines that cure a patient, and hence the nurse should look at patient care differently.