NURSING EDUCATION AND QUALITY OF PATIENT CARE

Nursing Education And Quality Of Patient Care

Nursing Education And Quality Of Patient Care

Literature Review

Nursing is an important part of the health system, with its considerable human resources and real potential to meet the needs of the population with an accessible and affordable health care. Nursing provides an individual, sick or healthy, help in everything that contributes to the health or its recovery (or the onset of a painless death) and what people could cope without outside help, if he had enough strong, purposeful and informed, and do so in a way to help him as soon as possible to regain self-sufficiency. Nursing is an art and science simultaneously. It requires the possession of specific skills, knowledge and skills in their practical application, based on knowledge and methods of the various humanities and sciences, studying the physical, social, medical and biological laws.

The nurse shortage, the need to recruit more students into the profession, and the importance of retaining nurses in practice are priority areas in health care today. Understanding the characteristics of good nurses and how they go about doing the right thing is helpful in the quest to address these issues. The term 'good nurse' is frequently used in conversations between health care professionals and laypersons alike, but remains a vague concept (Sumner, 2004).

Education and Credentialing of Nurses

Over time and in response to health-sector demands, the scope of nurses' work increased, as has the knowledge and skills required to competently fulfill those duties. Today, nurses operate on many rungs of the professional ladder. Each step requires additional educational preparation beyond the minimum entry to practice, which in turn qualifies a nurse to engage in a wider scope of practice and in a wider variety of practice settings. Along with this added responsibility and accountability come greater autonomy and control over work and decision making; improved wages and career mobility; and greater social, economic, and political power. Depending on the country or state, a practical nurse or nursing assistant may require a few months to two years of preparation in an approved program to acquire the basic knowledge and skills deemed necessary to perform competently (Hart, 2005).

Minimum entry to practice for a nurse has increased from two years of college preparation to four years of university preparation. The clinical nurse specialist, nurse anesthetist, nurse midwife, and nurse practitioner require several years of advanced training to develop the expertise to practice in these specialist roles. Nurses may be prepared at the master's and doctoral levels to assume work in senior administration, education, and research.

The International Council of Nurses unites more than 130 national nursing associations from around the world. The goal of the federation is to promote quality nursing care by sharing information about health and social issues from a range of international perspectives and by informing health practice and policies that contribute to health and healthcare globally. One initiative is to provide credentialing services and products. Credentialing is a mechanism for ensuring that an ...