The nursing profession as viewed by the general public
Discussion Question 2
Describe how the nursing profession is viewed by the general public. Discuss factors that influence the public's perception of nursing? Describe ways to educate the general public on the professional nurse's role and scope of nursing within a changing health care system.
As a profession, nursing has been misunderstood by the public, and the role-plays in society. Since its inception as a profession by Florence Nightingale, society has always viewed the nurses merely as the assistants to doctors and professions who do what the doctors command. Moreover, Manners (2017) states that society has also perceived nursing as a profession of the female gender and not for men. This perception of the society towards the nursing profession has grown in almost all parts of the globe. Besides, it is possible to find a patient referring to a female doctor and a male nurse as a doctor. Sometimes, one may even wonder if this perception is ignorance or just confusing the nursing profession.
Further, evidence suggests that the primary influence of this social perception of the nursing profession also concerns religious aspects whereby some sections of the Christians, particularly the Catholic Church, has trained some of their female members to provide nursing care and refer to them as 'sisters.' The other reason for perceiving nurses as assistants to doctors is due to the roles nurses play in the healthcare system. In most cases, nurses provide nursing care to the patients after the doctors have done the prescription (Browne, Wall, Batt, & Bennett,2018). Through these roles, the public has been seeing nursing as playing the role of helping the doctors.
Nursing Discussion Posts Writing
The public can be educated concerning the professional nursing roles and their scope of practice in different ways. For instance, patients need to be informed that the services they receive come from the team of healthcare professionals comprised of a group of healthcare interdisciplinary, and no one is an assistant to the others (Hathaway & Maibach, 2018). The public needs to be informed that nurses have roles and responsibilities they play in the healthcare system as per the scope of their practice, independent of the tasks the doctors perform. Moreover, society must also be aware that both men and women can provide nursing services, and the profession is not limited to any specific gender.
Reference
Browne, C., Wall, P., Batt, S., & Bennett, R. (2018). Understanding perceptions of nursing professional identity in students entering an Australian undergraduate nursing degree. Nurse education in practice, 32, 90-96.
Hathaway, J., & Maibach, E. W. (2018). Health implications of climate change: a review of the literature about the perception of the public and health professionals. Current environmental health reports, 5(1), 197-204.
Manners, R. A. (Ed.). (2017). Professional dominance: The social structure of medical care. Routledge.
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