Understanding the Contemporary Nursing Practice

Contemporary Nursing Practice
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Contemporary Nursing Practice
Nursing practice has evolved greatly since the days of Florence Nightingale, where nursing had little to do with clinical training and more to do with gender and willingness to care for others. The first prominent change in the nursing profession was formalized education in the early 20th century. First, student nurses received clinical instruction in hospitals to provide safe, quality, and humanized medical care. Then, as patient needs became more complex, the hospital-based training model shifted towards training programs in nursing colleges and universities. By the turn of the century, more than 871 nursing schools dotted the country as nursing training emphasized specialization and academic progression (Texas Woman's Hospital, 2019).
Another major evolution in nursing regards the comprehensive scope of duties that nurses progressively assumed. Nursing was no longer relegated to care-taking but included other functions such as conducting research, advocating for patients, and leading healthcare teams. Nurses are now responsible for carrying research to support clinical decisions, over and above, using new technologies such as big data to improve nursing practice. Besides providing care for the sick and infirm, nurses today promote patient equality, dignity, and freedom (Yingling, 2021). The nursing profession is now a respected field, and nurses can now assume leadership positions and responsibilities in patient care and in designing the healthcare system itself.
The competency differences between an associate and baccalaureate education in nursing are the former's focus on clinical skills instead of the latter's emphasis on nursing research, leadership, and management besides clinical skills training. While ADN nurses are very hands-on, the BSN nurse better comprehend the economic, clinical, and social issues affecting patients due to their strong research, community health, patient advocacy, disease prevention, and informatics background (Herzing University, 2021). As a result, the associate nurse's scope of practice is mostly limited to core nursing duties such as administering basic procedures, monitoring patients, or updating charts. On the other hand, the baccalaureate nurse's scope extends beyond technical, clinical tasks to include administrative and managerial responsibilities that tilt towards broader initiatives within the healthcare institution.
The BSN nurse can be entrusted to carry out clinical research and deliver comprehensive, holistic care that considers the social, economic, and cultural issues affecting specific populations or communities. One patient care situation where differences between the BSN-prepared nurse and the ADN nurse emerge is caring for surgical patients. The BSN education aims to enhance the nurse's analytical and critical thinking skills, and he or she is capable of helping with extra clinical procedures that the ADN nurse is unfamiliar with (Nightingale College, 2019). Studies show that hospitals with a higher percentage of nurses with BSN than ADN record lower mortality and failure-to-rescue rates when caring for t...