Nursing
The nursing profession is credited to Florence Nightingale who started nursing schools in the late 19th.century. Since then, the roles and rules have changed a lot. Now the status of a nurse is comparable to a doctor and medical practitioners.
The setting has also become multi dimensional. Nurses have become an integral part of a hospital, health care centres, nursing homes, welfare communities and disaster management. Now a days, they are visible in hotels too, helping senior citizens and to attend to persons contracting some kind of illness during a stay. Home nursing is perhaps prevalent from ages. The term nurse is specifically used for a female nurse.
A nurse is a professional. She works together with a doctor or a health care group. She is an interface between the patient and the doctors attending to him. She is responsible for the care and treatment up to the entire period of recovery of patients either suffering acutely or chronically. Nurses are also invited to participate in medical research. We may still find wet nurses breastfeeding infants.
Educational qualification is not definitive in terms of this profession. We may find a middle school passed nurse in many places. However, they are professionally trained with elaborate theoretical and practical sessions including on the job training to prepare them fully for a nursing job. But qualifying in a recognised certificate or diploma course is mandatory for registration as a nurse. They may get further educated and trained in specialised areas and acquire higher qualification of bachelor, master or doctoral degree.
Nursing is a moral commitment. It is a mission with humane flavour. It is highly ethical. To take care of ailing persons and help them sympathetically in recuperation, saving a human life is a uniquely noble mission. Curing may be a doctor’s job but caring is singularly an ambit of nurses. Nursing finds synonym with caring. Kindness and goodness are integrated in this profession.
They are trained to be sympathetic and respectful to patients without becoming personally drawn in yet preserving the patient’s dignity and confidentiality. On the other hand, if the patient is physically or mentally uncontrollable, a nurse may confide to proper channels.
Truthfulness is in the core of all the ethical properties. A nurse has to be truthful to the attending team of medical professional. She has also to be truthful to the attending and visiting family members and friends. She has, finally, to be carefully truthful to the patient to keep him or her morally strong but not to weaken him further with distressful truths.