Essay Sample on Nursing Profession

📌Category: Business, Career, Health, Nursing
📌Words: 1053
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 19 February 2022

The nursing profession is a very large and wide-ranging profession. As a nursing student, exploring nursing literature is a good way to dig deep into developing a professional nursing identity, becoming familiar with the types of journals, articles, and topics in nursing literature, and learning about the profession of nursing. For this paper, I chose an article that illustrated the changes in the roles and experiences of registered nurses (RN’s) on labor and delivery (LD) units during the Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout this paper, I will discuss why this topic was of most interest and importance to me, provide a brief description of the focus of the professional nursing journal, provide an overview of the article, as well as discuss the nursing roles that were evident in the article. 

Why I chose this article

First, I chose this article because the labor and delivery unit is where I would like to pursue my degree, as I have a strong interest in being a part of such a big moment in new or pre-existing parents’ lives and helping them through a life-changing experience. Second, Covid-19 has had such a major impact on everyone’s life but, when talking about childbirth, labor and delivery nurses are the frontline workers in the pandemic we are all facing (George et al., 2021). This article was a great representation of the challenges that nurses are facing during the pandemic and how much of an impact Covid-19 has had on them and the roles and responsibilities they carry. 

Focus of the Journal 

The focus of the Journal of obstetric, gynecologic, and neonatal nursing is to advance the health and health care of women, childbirth, child rearing, and newborns through the bimonthly publication of peer-reviewed nursing articles. The journal has been in publication from 1972-present. (Journal of obstetric, gynecologic, and neonatal nursing, 2021). In addition, the journal includes review articles that obtain opinions from health care professionals relating to many different controversial topics. The journal targets nurses, advanced practice nurses, midwives and any other professionals relating to health care. 

Overview of the Article

The authors of the article that was selected outlined the data conducted using a cross-sectional survey with the objective of examining the role change and the experiences of labor and delivery nurses during the Covid-19 pandemic. The survey included 1021 labor and delivery nurses, and the open-ended question: how has your role changed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic was asked, with specific examples provided (George., et al 2021). The survey revealed that most respondents described a change in their roles and responsibilities since the Covid-19 pandemic. 

When evaluating the results, it was revealed that four major categories were derived from the responses: Changes in roles and responsibilities, adaptations to changes, psychological changes, and perceived effects on labor support (George et al., 2021). First, in regard to changes in roles and responsibilities, about half of the nurses reported direct and indirect changes in their roles and responsibilities and felt that they had picked up additional responsibilities that were not required of them before the pandemic. As a result of the extra responsibilities, nurses reported an increased demand on their time, a decrease in the ability to provide bedside care, and how this resulted in a distraction from providing direct patient care such as labor support (George et al., 2021). Second, the adaptations in care delivery and work processes necessitated more time for preparation which resulted in less time providing direct patient care, such as donning before entering a client’s room (George et al., 2021). Next is psychological changes. Respondents expressed that uncertainty and communication overload challenged the capacity to provide consistent care with the current protocols in place, as there were so many changes made it was hard to keep track. This resulted in a decrease in the overall health of nurses and a disease called burnout (George et al., 2021). The final category is perceived effects on labor support. The results from the respondents in this category revealed both negative and positive effects. Some nurses reported a decrease in the time they had available to be at bedside providing labor support due to the effect Covid-19 had on patient care. However, in some cases, nurses felt that because of the visitor restriction that was put in place due to Covid-19, they were able to provide better support to laboring mothers (George et al., 2021). Overall, labor and delivery nurses have been tremendously affected in many aspects during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Nursing Roles

Nurses fulfill many different roles each day, and many times, they perform these roles simultaneously without even realizing it. The following roles of nurses have been identified: caregiver; communicator; educator; client advocate; counsellor; change agent; leader; manager; case manager; research consumer and expanded career roles (Kozier et al., 2018). In the article that was selected, the roles that were evident were: caregiver and educator. 

Caregiver 

To demonstrate the caregiver role, as a nurse you perform activities that aid the client physically and psychologically while preserving the client’s self-respect (Kozier et al., 2018). In the article, the client would be the laboring mother and her support person. Due to Covid-19, a visitor restriction was placed on hospitals, which resulted in a mother giving birth with just one support person and losing the ability to leave the room for food or any other reason. Nurses then had to fulfill the role of a care giver. As said in the chosen article by a nurse, they have become more of an emotional support as they must provide everything for the client and their support person considering they cannot leave the room. Nurses have become the clients’ partners, moms, and lastly, their friends. They are constantly encouraging and cheering them on as they face new challenges (George et al., 2021). The nurse demonstrated the caregiver role in the article by providing psychological care to laboring mothers and their support person.  

Educator 

As a nurse, to achieve the role as an educator, the nurse educates clients about health and healthcare procedures they need to perform to improve or maintain their health (Kozier et al., 2018). In the article, the nurse demonstrated the role as an educator by policing clients and their support person to enforce the infection control practices pertaining to Covid-19 such as monitoring clients’ proper use of masks, proper hand washing, and watching for signs and symptoms (George et al., 2021). 

Conclusion

As a nursing student, exploring nursing literature is an extremely important aspect. This paper concentrated on an article found in the Journal of obstetric, gynecologic, and neonatal nursing. The article that was selected gave insight on how the Covid-19 pandemic impacted the roles and responsibilities of labor and delivery nurses by performing a cross sectional survey which outlined four major categories from the results. From reviewing the actions of the nurses that were present in the article, 2 nursing roles were evident: caregiver and educator.    

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