Professional Practices in Nursing

Professional Practices in Nursing

Professional socialization is about how people learn the values, the norms and the practices of their profession in order for them to perform their roles effectively. This practice is essential in helping students in their transition to professional practice. Professional socialization is essential in ensuring quality and safety in healthcare (EL Sayed & Sleem, 2011) and it serves as a motivator to the students or the practicing nurses to embrace the learning opportunities within the work environment. Students have their own perception about the nursing practice, which sometimes differs from reality. However, through professional socialization, students are able to get the facts and occurrences within the nursing field. The learning process is continuous and is essential in ensuring job satisfaction and bridging the gap between a person’s idea and the reality. The socialization can be formal or informal.

Inter-professional collaboration is one of the ways professional socialization occurs in my place of work. There have been training programs to help understand the need for teamwork and collaboration in ensuring patient welfare. The norm in the healthcare system is that the nursing field is mainly for the female gender but the physicians are male and they seem more superior to the nurses. This is a cause of strain in their working relationship and in most cases; the nurses just take directives from the physicians and without involvement in the decisions. As a result, there is less job satisfaction among the nurses because of how physicians perceive their role in provision of healthcare (Sayed & Sleem, 2011). Through the inter-professional interventions, each person gets to learn the importance of the role the other person plays and how working together can be essential in improving safety and quality in health care. Mutual respect and positive attitudes results from such interactions and the professionals are able to work together, thus playing complementary roles in ensuring positive outcomes for the patients. There is also a higher rate of job satisfaction among the nurses. Inter-professional collaboration is essential in facilitating positive socialization for nurses.

The safety of the patient is important when providing healthcare and any errors or delays puts the life of the patients at risk. It is essential for healthcare institutions to change the practices that increase the risks to patients. The issue of administering medication is sensitive and there is need to stop delay in medication administration due to delays when nurses are getting supplies. When there are delays in the administration of medication, the patients are at a risk of not getting the care they need. The first step in changing this situation following Lewin’s theory is unfreezing (Mitchell, 2013). The administration recognizes the need to eliminate the delays when nurses are getting supplies. The second stage is the moving stage. At this stage, the administration comes up with a strategy to rectify the situation and begin the implementation of the new measures. If the delays in getting supplies are because of the search due to the location and the organization of the drugs, there can be organization in the storage system to ensure clear labeling and order in the storage of drugs. This is essential in minimizing the time the nurse spends looking for the supplies. The third stage is refreezing. The management works towards ensuring that the change resulting in positive outcomes becomes part of the organizations practices. This can be through allocation of the labeling and organizing of the drugs to a particular person. There can be a challenge in the implementation and maintenance of this change because the theory of change by Lewin embraces the top down approach and the management hands down the decisions to the subordinates without involving them in the decision making process (Mitchell, 2013). The staff members can be reluctant to change if they do not understand the reason behind the change or they do not feel as if they are part of the organization. This can reduce the rate of productivity and job satisfaction as well as risk the quality and safety of care to the patients.