The Career
Choosing the right career is the right thing a person can do. The right career must be pegged on a student’s ambitions and passions, and not the influence of his or her parents and peers. In the modern competitive business world, the right career can enrich your career path, recognition and advancement both in the short run and long run. For myself I would choose nursing as my career option. Nursing is the holistic profession of taking care of the sick and the injured ones. The reason I choose this type of career is the future probabilistic job market. With the ever growing population, the long term need for nurses will be directly proportional to the population growth. Also, the future pay for a nurse will likely to rise due to demand-supply pricing mechanisms. In the United States the ratio of nurse to patient have continued to widen due to the population growth, baby tourism and anchored babies programs. The ratio is 1:5; meaning one nurse takes care of five patients in a given time. Also Immigration policies have enabled the migration of foreigners into the United States.
Social and Economic Characteristics of Nursing
The first social characteristic of nursing is caring. The injured and the sick must always receive utmost care all the time. According to Leininger’s Culture Care Theory, care is the paramount aspect that enhances the healing process of a patient. Leininger’s argued that individual’s culture pegged ideas on medicine, care and health factors will positively determine the outcome of patient recovery. Caring is the core value of every hospital so as to hasten the healing process of a patient. The second social characteristic is empathy. Nurses deal with a lot of patients experiencing moderate to severe emergency cases. These can make an ordinary person become stressed and worn out. But for a nurse, empathy is the most paramount value. Nurses should treat each patient with empathy. This can be achieved by person-centered care approach to enable the nurse to have empathy while taking care of all patients in a single day. When patients encounter empathy from a nursing, the experience of ultimate care is achieved.
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The third social characteristic of nursing is attention to detail. Daily care of sick and injured patients requires utmost attention to detail from a nurse. Due to their weak state, patients discuss their conditions with low tones and even facial expressions, and the nurse must be able to extract the patient’s information for clinical presentation and treatment. This requires ultimate attention to detail. Also nurses are daily under great pressure from clinicians who give them orders for their own interpretation on the patient care management. Nurses are prone to human error due to the immense pressure. From the recruitment stage, a nurse with high attention to detail will ultimately thrive in his or her profession in the near future. The fourth social characteristic is problem solving. A nurse must be able to take patients abstract ideas and complaints and solve them in real time. Real time solving of a patient problem determines whether a patient survives or dies.
Economic characteristic of nursing is that it depends of on patients. Pricing mechanisms are correlated with demand-supply mechanisms. This means a shortfall of the sick in the hospitals will lead to nurses being laid off, retrenched or sent on leave. Another economic value of nursing is the improved living standards of people. With nursing, sick people can be taken cared for until they heal and reunite back to the society. Unlike in the older days, people could became sick and die because of lack of medical supplies and professionals to take care of their illnesses.
Type of People It Employs
Nursing profession employs diverse personnel based on their education, experience and merit. The nursing profession doesn’t employ people based on their sex, gender etc. Nursing profession employs most qualified and trained individuals. Minors who are below the age of 18 cannot be fully employed; also retirement age is between 45 years and 55 years old. Clinical interpretations, presentations and overall taking care of sick and injured patients require expert experience in the field of nursing. Also, nursing profession employs nurses who are flexible, problem solving, analytical, team builder, hardworking, patient, honest, keen to detail, creative and excellent communicator.
The Status of Nursing Profession in the United States
In the United States, nursing profession is on high demand due to ever bulging population growth. Also the growing old age people are on the rise, and nurses are needed to take care of them. According to Bereau of Labor Statistics, nursing demand is expected to grow by 12% from the year 2018 to 2028. This implies that employability of a nurse in the United States is high in the near future. Today, nurses must get accreditation from the relevant government body so as to enable him or her practice anywhere in the United State. The field of nursing in the United States offers a competitive higher salary package and added allowances if a nurse works on extra hours, weekend and holidays. There is job security for nurses in the United States due to the available patient demand. In the United States, unions play an important role in the championing the rights and grievances of nurses whenever they arise. For example in 2020, National Nurses United comprising of California Nurses Association, D.C Nurses Associations, Minnesota Nurses Association among other unions, urged their members to strike so as respective hospitals can equip them in terms of PPEs and N95 masks so as to prevent them from contracting the deadly novel coronavirus. Therefore in United States we have active unions that champion the rights and grievances for nurses. This minimizes the overall industrial action that may put the lives of innocent patients at risk. Also, baby boomers are shrinking the possible rise in demand for registered nurses in the United States. According to American Association of Registered Nurses, there is urgent need for key policymakers, government and charitable organization to advocate the need for creation of maximum capacity to train nurses in the long run.
Major Issues Facing Nursing In the United States
The major issue facing the nursing profession is the inadequate staffing. According to Walden University, inadequate staffing of nurses is a matter of life and death. The only few present nurses work for longer hours which drains them of the morale and energy to offer excellent job productivity. Inadequate nursing profession has been realized due to complex processes followed by a non-registered nurse to fully get accredited and registered. The second major issue facing nursing fraternity in the United States is the mandatory overtime aspect. Long work hours makes nurses to become sleepy and make small errors while performing their crucial role as a nurse. This puts the lives of patient at risk due to faulty errors made by overworked nurses. Another issue is the unsafe needles which sometimes cause blood infections to nurses. Workplace violence is also a major issue in the nursing profession. Frequent violence inflicted to nurses by fellow workmates, clients and patients is of concern. The United States gun laws always put the lives of nurses at risk. Career advancement is also a concern in the nursing profession. Mandatory overtime and short leave days, limits a nurse from fostering and continuing his or her own studied. This results to demotivation, job absenteeism, suicidal thoughts and drug abuse. But nonetheless, I choose nursing as my preferred career profession because of the passion and agility to take care of the sick in the future. Also due to the demand certainty of nursing employability made me to choose this career. The better pay that nurses will likely get will be a rewarding perfective on my career path. Nursing also presents importunity to me to take care of the critically ill patients at their lowest point when they are sick. What also make me choose the nursing profession are the great analytical skills, communication, problem solving, conceptual and social skills I have towards humanity. In the future as a practicing and registered nurse, my goal is to advocate for centered pregnancy. Centered nursing is the ultimate way to go for an alternative prenatal care. Centered pregnancy puts women into groups rather than individuals prenatal visit. This type enables pregnant women to share their experiences as a group and this enables them benchmark individual solutions on pregnancy individual related challenges.
Conclusion
Nursing as a profession plays a robust vital role in ensuring enriched life expectancy of humanity is realized in life development. The population growth will in the near future depend on the presence of qualified and registered nurses. To maximize on the probable opportunity this field will create in the future, I have chosen this profession as my career and long-term career path. The United States government and major key stakeholders in the health sector should continue to channel more budgetary allocation in the sector. In turn, it will enhance establishment of more teaching space for nursing training.
