Understanding Professional Nursing Standards in Australia (Term Paper Sample)

Understanding Professional Nursing Standards in Australia
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Introduction
According to Bostridge (2015), modern nursing is premised on Nightingale's pioneering work in nursing. The major goal of the Professional Standards is to advance, lead and steer professional practices (Hoyt, 2010). The Professional Nursing Standards are relevant to individual nurses, their employers, the public and other important stakeholders. Professional Standards are relevant to nurses, who are registered and practice as it supports their ongoing individual professional development and competence; as well as explain what professional practice demands (Selanders, 2010). Professional nursing standards are relevant to the public as they can use them to appreciate the expectations for professional nursing practice.
The historical roots of modern nursing practice can be traced to the battlefield during the dawn of the industrial age in the early nineteenth century in Europe (Nightingale, 2010). Florence Nightingale bequeathed the profession with its foundation, and the source of independent nursing practice distinct from other medical fields. Employers find the Professional Standards relevant when considering the development of systems that aid nurses in meeting the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australian's (NMBA) standards of practice. Besides, the employers need the Professional standards to assist in the development of job descriptions that clearly show the expectations for the practice, well for use in the development of orientation programs and creation of performance appraisal instruments. Also, she is accredited with the acknowledging the value of empirical evidence that underpins his present profession focus on evidence-based practice. Nightingale stood for clinical nursing research in mid-19th; it seems for a century, her advice was not heeded for a century. Nightingale's knowledge was indeed a pioneer in the profession, but the present advances in the profession are incomparable to her experience (Miracle, 2008).
Florence Nightingale is recognized as the founder of modern practices in nursing. In most of her works, she has impacted on the way nursing roles and practices are carried. Her roots can be traced back to Italy, having been born on 1820. At the age of 24, she felt that God had called her to assist the sick and the poor despite the fact that she had no idea concerning the nursing framework (Nightingale, 2010). Her dedication and hard work helped make the nursing profession to be respected towards improving the standards of nursing practices and involve appropriate responsibilities and education in this vital profession (Kozier, 2008).
Nightingale first school of nursing was established in 1960 which was the first step towards nursing education and training (Nightingale, 2010). According to Nightingale, education and training were paramount to nurses as this assisted these nurses to establish and maintain positive outcome with their patients. It is was in this school that first official nursing training programs took place. This school was part of the St. Thomas Hospital in the UK. Through this training programs, nurses got to understand how to manage things within the hospital settings, help the sick and the poor, and more importantly spread the new nursing gospel to others. In her training, Nightingale trained nursing students on how to cater for patient both at hospitals and at home settings as she stresses on the ideas of midwife practices (Stanley & Sherratt, 2010).
After facing inadequacies of facilities of treating the wounded soldiers, Nightingale established some nursing concepts that are used today as the core nursing roles in today’s nursing competency standards. These roles include therapeutic communication, assessment, spiritual nursing, public health advocacy, and infection control (Selanders & Crane, 2012). Not only did Nightingale impact the nursing profession in the USA, but she also let her many followers disperse the nursing standards in many hospitals around the world. This action saw many of the Nightingale nurses become matron in the major facilities in Australia, London, and New South Wales (Foster, 2010).
Nightingale has been described by many scholars as a systematic thinker as well as a passionate statistician (Zborowsky, 2014). According to Burns & Grove (2010), this character is defined by Nightingales advocating for research based approaches in nursing. Most of her practices in nursing and social reforms were based on religious faith and philosophy that supported this systematic approach. Nightingale established the survey instrument and defined the presentation of information when dealing with research (Kozier, 2008). Worth to mention, Nightingale adopted a knowledge-based approach in leadership (Stanley & Sherratt, 2010). From her research works, there are many examples that were based on evidence that aimed at influencing the social policy. Nightingale investigated the extremeness in child mortality in her landmark study of maternal morbidity. This action supported her theory of evidence based research when it comes decision making in the hospital setting. Additionally, in her late life, Nightingale advocated on the importance of statistical knowledge towards public policy (McDonald, 2014).
Nightingale championed for the improvement of hospitals conditions. Throughout her efforts, she advocated for hospital managers to enhance their facilities to cater for quality services by adopting modern designs in hospitals. As a nurse in the Crimean War, she was dismayed by the deteriorated and dirty environment of the military hospitals. In improving these worse conditions, Nightingale made sanitary improvements by establishing the standards of safe and clean healthcare surroundings that saw death rates of treated soldiers decrease. In describing all these, in her book “Notes on Hospitals”, she expanded on the importance of maintaining given standards in hospitals that could be achieved through increased space, additional windows, more light, and improved ventilation (Miracles, 2008).
Florence Nightingales had a bigger role in helping of the establishment of nursing education as she worked towards spreading the knowledge and wisdom relating to nursing in her first textbook “Notes of Nursing” back in 1960. In this book, Nightingale emphasized the core ideas of the nursing profession, by illustrating the management of illness both at the hospitals and at home. Furthermore, she centered her thoughts upon understanding the patient’s specific symptoms and health needs, hence appropriate and quality care for the patient (Nightingales, 2010). More importantly, she concentrated on the importance of maintaining a clean health care surrounding, light in rooms, and a nutritious diet for the patient (Selanders & Crane, 2012).
Florence Nightingale concepts in nursing are the compass to the larger Australian nursing framework today. It is through Nightingale research and works that nursing frameworks, nursing competencies, and nursing practices were established. The Australian nursing competency framework is based on four domains that include therapeutic communication, critical thinking and analysis, provision, coordination, and collaborative, and professional practice (Foster, 2010). In the professional practice domain, the nursing practices should be legal and subject to nursing practices and health care. This domain is defined from her research contribution in nursing that she was the first person that helped define the nursing profession in today’s nursing world; hence, she quantified these competency standards. The other competency is that nursing practice should be based on professional and ethical terms. This concept of competency is explained by Nightingale as she established the Nightingale pledge that had the element of ethics in nursing (Hoyt, 2010).
Nightingale gave a new look in nursing research by familiarizing measurement of client morale and attempting to implement nursing practices, which had an outcome of motivating a client confidence. This idea of familiarizing measurement matches the domain of critical thinking and analysis. In this domain, the first competency is that nursing practices should be based on defined evidence. In most of the works, Nightingale based her research on evidence. After her return from the Crimean War, Nightingale endeavored to stimulate the social policy with the suggestion for social physics at the Oxford University (McDonald, 2014). The second competency under this domain is the involvement in the professional development of both self and others. This competency is practicable in Nightingale works as she was the founding figure of Nightingale school where nurses were trained and educated (Kozier, 2008).
In the third domain of provision and coordination, the first competency is the conduction of detailed and systematic nursing valuation (Bostridge, 2015). After assessing inefficiency in soldiers hospitals that rendered poor services, she went ahead and came up with nursing concepts that are ...