How to Show Excellence in Nursing?

Each profession imposes certain requirements on a person, but perhaps the work of a physician imposes especially high and specific duties on a specialist, implies a high responsibility for the assistance provided to patients. Medical workers are entrusted with health and life, and therefore people expect complete dedication from them. Hippocrates believed that “a person who devoted himself to medicine should have the following qualities: selflessness, modesty, chastity, common sense, composure… “. The founder of scientific nursing, Flores Nightingale, wrote that the main art of a nurse is to be able to immediately guess the wishes of the patient.

Psychological “Portrait” of the Profession

The main professionally important qualities include technical skills. A modern nurse should have “four virtues”: high professionalism; love for the profession, for the sick; special qualities – calmness, endurance; utmost honesty.

Professionally important qualities are the components of a professionally determined personality structure. The most important components of human psychological activity are its qualities. Their development and integration in the process of professional development leads to the formation of a system of professionally important qualities. This is a complex and dynamic process of formation of functional and operational actions based on the psychological properties of the individual. In the process of mastering and performing activities, psychological qualities are gradually professionalized, forming an independent substructure.

Thus, professionally important qualities are psychological and psycho-physiological qualities and personality traits that determine productivity (quality, effectiveness, etc.) of activity. They are multifunctional, and at the same time, each profession has its own ensemble of these qualities.

The set of professionally important qualities for a particular profession is reflected in the professiogram – the psychological “portrait” of the profession. Psychological professiogram can be defined as a comprehensive, systematic, concise and multilateral description of the type of work, designed to conduct a psychological study of labor and use in further practice. It includes important psychological characteristics of production activities (within a specific profession) and contains such information that is important for further research and practical work in all areas of work psychology.

The analysis of the special literature allowed us to compile the following generalized professiogram for “Nurse”.

Functions of a Nurse

• Care of patients;
• monitoring of the patient’s condition;
• performance of medical procedures prescribed by a doctor;
• registration and discharge of patients;
• control over food and the sanitary condition of patients;
• assisting the doctor at the reception;
• control over the sanitary and hygienic condition in the Department and the ward;
• control, accounting and storage of medicines;
• skilled assistance for newborn care;
• provision of timely medical assistance in emergency situations;
• providing all possible psychological assistance and support to patients;
• implementation of rehabilitation and preventive measures;
• carrying out sanitary and educational work among the population;
• implementation of propaganda aimed at combating drugs, alcoholism, smoking;
• registration of medical documentation.

Qualities That Lead to High Job Performance

• Concentration and attention switching (the ability to quickly switch attention from one activity to another, the ability to focus on one object or activity, distracting from others, and the ability to keep the focus on several objects at the same time or perform several activities in parallel);
• high level of analytical thinking development;
• fine visual, auditory and tactile sensitivity;
• ability to respond quickly to situations;
• ability to work in stressful conditions (night work, military field conditions, etc.);
• ability to self-control;
• ability to endure heavy physical activity;
• manual dexterity during various medical procedures, precise sensorimotor coordination;
• observation and good memory;
• patience and endurance;
• goodwill and friendliness;
• responsibility;
• accuracy;
• tact;
• sensitivity;
• attentiveness;
• conscientiousness;
• sociability
• emotional balance.

Personality Traits That Can Keep You From Success

• Fastidiousness;
• irresponsibility;
• carelessness;
• selfishness;
• cruelty;
• emotional instability;
• intolerance;
• distraction.

As you can see, the profession of a nurse makes great demands on the psychophysiological properties of a person and the whole set of mental functions. Requirements to personal qualities relate primarily to the emotional-volitional and communicative sphere.