Attributes Of A True Professional Registered Nurse

As a student embarking on a nursing career, professionalism to me means being the best in my future profession and to be able to display attributes and behaviour of a true professional (Crisp 2018) (DeLaune et al. 2016). Although there are many attributes and behaviours a professional should display, I will only focus on three behaviours that I believe will help me foster and develop attributes of a professional registered nurse. Those behaviours are, the ability to display respect, communicate effectively, and act responsibly (College of Health and Medicine 2018). I will also mention an intertwining attributes of each behaviour, which are, the ability to empathise, to communicate, and to be responsible (College of Health and Medicine 2018).
To be respectful, empathy is a required attribute. ‘Improving empathy can lead to improved communication and therapeutic relationships between the nurse and the patient…In addition, empathy has been associated with improved patient outcomes…therefore, improvement in empathy in nursing students may lead to improvement in Patient-centred care and patient outcomes’ (Haley et al. 2017). In a clinical setting with a constant flow of patients, it can be easy to treat a person as a bed number and without dignity and empathy (Crisp 2018). I believe it is when we empathise with patients, we see them as a person rather than another client. In practice, a nurse should utilise internal empathy to treat patients as an individual and therefore provide them with personalised care which will increase the overall patient satisfaction (Haley et al.
When studying team-based learning, Currey et al. wrote that ‘in our global healthcare system, nurses require … strong communication skills to provide safe, high-quality patient care’ (2015, p.232). The National Standards and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) standards aim to protect the public by improving the quality of healthcare and by providing a framework for continuous improvement. One of the eight standards from NSQHS standards is ‘Communicating for Safety’ (2017, 48-52). The aim of this standard is to ‘ensure timely, purpose-driven and effective communication and documentation that support continuous, coordinated and safe care for patients’ (ACSQHC 2017, 48-52). This is supported by five criteria, one of which is ‘communication at clinical handover’, which is to ensure a clinical handover that effectively communicates the health details of a patient (ACSQHC 2017, 48-52). A registered nurse should, during the handover stage, practice effective communication as a miscommunication may result in more pain, rehospitalisation, or even death to the patient (Crisp 2018). Effective communication is a great theoretical attribute to possess, and when it's applied in practice, it is considered