The Transition from a Student to a Nurse (Research Paper Sample)

The Transition from a Student to a Nurse Student's Name Course Code and Name Instructor's Name Date Institutional Affiliation The Transition from a Student to a Nurse Today, healthcare is constantly facing increased issues such as technological pitfalls, nurse shortages, poor infrastructure, and health equity concerns, all of which negatively impact the administration of patient-centered care. On one hand, healthcare facilities and providers are increasingly inventing strategies to curb the above challenges by encouraging healthcare professionals to further their education and familiarize themselves with technological advancements and diagnoses for newly emerging diseases. On the other, new graduate nurses have increased obstacles, such as fear, excessive job expectations, and workload, which threaten to prevent them from participating in positively transforming the healthcare environment. Still, nurses have an opportunity to perform increased roles in transforming the healthcare environment to enhance high-quality and value-driven care for patients. This paper discusses roles, skills, knowledge, and attitudes; issues and challenges; and strategies to assist new nurses upon entering today's complex healthcare environment. Roles of a New Graduate Nurse in the Healthcare Environment As opposed to complex tasks such as managing caseloads of patients with intense care needs, a new graduate nurse should assist the interprofessional team in offering family-centered and therapeutic patient care in today's complex healthcare environment. This means that new graduate nurses should identify symptoms and take appropriate measures, such as informing physicians and advanced practice nurses to administer treatment to guarantee healing. Another role a new graduate nurse should assume is assisting in collecting and assessing data related to patient health status to create, execute, and evaluate a critical pathway. This gives physicians and other healthcare professionals an easier time identifying medications and treatment to administer, saving time in attending to patients with more complications. Under close supervision, new graduate nurses should assist in creating goals and strategies for meeting the patient or family's continuing care needs. In establishing goals and strategies, new graduate nurses play a crucial role in collaborating with other nursing staff members, which promotes a conducive working environment that promotes patient-centered care. According to Hochman (2017), patient-centered care is respecting individual patient preferences and needs and ensuring that patient values guide clinical decisions. In addition, since new graduate nurses are responsible for establishing goals and strategies to meet patients’ continued needs, experienced healthcare professionals are better positioned to understand patients' needs and apply ethical nursing considerations in decision-making. Skills, Knowledge, and Attitudes Desired in New Nurses Nursing leaders acknowledge and appreciate the benefits of effective communication in nursing. As a result, they desire new nurses to have practical communication skills to identify specialized needs and understand patients' conditions and care needs. Dithole et al. (2017) discuss that communication creates consistent and easy nursing work and guarantees the satisfaction of the patient and the protection of the health of healthcare workers. Another skill that nursing leaders desire in new nurses is teamwork since it helps break down hierarchy and centralized power, giving individual employees the power to devise solutions to complex challenges in the healthcare practice. The healthcare environment is complex and thus requires creativity in decision-making. Nurses require critical thinking to develop safe, efficient, and skillful nursing interventions. In addition to critical thinking, nursing leaders desire new nurses with the ability to show empathy to patients. Empathy enables nurses to listen to and understand their patients' concerns, allowing them to provide the best treatment care. Notably, nursing leaders need new nurses with increased tolerance for uncertainty. Tolerance for uncertainty is the ability of nurses to adapt to changes and make peace with different situations even though they cannot control the current situation. In the long run, they will afford to offer compassionate care that will make patients maintain calm during changes. Lack of Skills, Knowledge, and Attitudes Among New Nurses Based on the feedback provided by a nurse leader of a local healthcare facility, new nurses lack confidence since they do not have the experience and expertise required to handle increased roles within the facility. Additionally, new nurses lack the skills to handle workplace conflicts, especially task-based ones. Task-based conflicts occur when nurses disagree on technical procedures that should be followed in any process. Lack of experience in practice might make new nurses feel less valued and essential when most of their opinions and strategies are not utilized. Moreover, the nurse leader claimed that new nurses lack knowledge on applying practice theories, such as the theory of human caring. The theory of human caring insists that caring regenerates life energies and potentiated individual capabilities (Létourneau et al., 2017). In addition, new nurses have limited or no knowledge of ways to care for different patients based on their health conditions. Lastly, the nurse leader claimed that new nurses lack professional motivation. This means that the level of commitment for new nurses is low, leading to decreased job satisfaction – hence decreased work performance and morale – threatening the facility's growth potential. Issues and Challenges Faced by New Nurses New nurses face increased challenges when transitioning from being students to nurses. For example, new nurses require training and mentorship to practice their skills and knowledge. If new nurses lack access to experienced coaches and mentors, they might have issues handling tasks and caring for patients with complex conditions. Additionally, new nurses might experience performance anxiety resulting from the fear of practically handling tasks and of bullying they might experience from experienced colleagues. In order to solve performance anxiety, new nurses should continuously practice and beli...