How has Nursing Changed
Over the past ten years, nurses have become increasingly needed in places other than nursing homes and hospitals. They can work in home health, be a travel nurse, school nurse and more. Believe it or not, this is actually only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ways nurses are utilized. Through need brought about by nursing shortages, nurses have learned to be more independent which is an excellent way to increase skills and keep current with new trends in health care.
Nursing has changed in the same way that health care in general has changed. Even though care of a patients is the ultimate goal, there is more work and sometimes less satisfaction because of the increased workload. It sometimes seems like there is less time to care for the patient as a whole, it's more about basic care because of the time issues.
Because of all the changes in the way health care is being managed, some might say that being a nurse is no longer mainly about taking care of patients. Anyone that has been a nurse for any amount of time can find many ways that nursing has changed. It seems like nursing is sometimes more about the paperwork than the patient sometimes. I have been a nurse for over 25 years, and every year there are changes in the nursing profession. In the past 10 years, technology has been a large part of the change in nursing. The use of computers for many aspects of nursing care is now a common occurrence and part of the standard of care. The changing world environment has led to new avenues that nurses can follow such as the fairly new specialty of forensics nursing.
Years ago, nurses for the most part did not have the amount of education that nurses do these days. Most nurses were diploma nurses or LPN's. There has been a gradual shift to more education for nurses and now it is very common for a nurse to have a bachelor's degree, master's degree or even a doctorate. When I was in college and working on my bachelor's degree, it was fairly uncommon to have a bachelor's degree and even more uncommon to have a master's degree let alone a doctorate degree. All of that has been changing and nurses are acquiring more and more education. Even after graduating, nurses are required to attend continuing education courses to keep current with new trends in nursing that they need to be aware of to function in an increased capacity.
Another way nursing has gradually been changing over the years, is by the slow increase in the amount of males who are entering the profession. For years nursing was predominately thought of as a female profession but every year more and more males are joining the profession. Being a male nurse no longer has the stigma that it did at one time.
Nurses have always been overworked but with the nursing shortages, they are even more overworked that before. I have been involved in various types of nursing other than hospital nursing in the past 15 years. As a patient in a hospital several years ago, I saw first hand just how short staffed they were and some of the obstacles nurses faced such as less support staff which lead to even more work for them.
Nurses today have to keep up with a lot more technology than their predecessors. Not only do they have to provide basic and skilled nursing care, they also to learn how to work with many types of equipment that are specific to their area of expertise. Computers are now a common way to document care and requires training for that as well.
Nursing is demanding on a person not only physically, but mentally as well. Stress is a common aspect of the nursing profession but the rewards you can gain greatly outweigh the difficulties that nurses face on a daily basis.
