Nursing Scope and Standards Quiz

Scope of Nursing Practice

• Nursing integrates art and science of caring, focusing on health protection, promotion, and optimization.
• It aims to prevent illness and injuries, facilitate healing, and alleviate suffering through compassionate presence.
• Nursing diagnoses and treats human responses and advocates for individuals, families, groups, communities, and populations.
• It recognizes the interconnectedness of all humanity.

Definition of Nursing

• The revised definition reorders content from 2015 version.
• It replaces abilities with human functioning and references compassionate presence.
• It acknowledges the connection of all humanity.
• Refinements reflect a five-year evolution of thinking.
• Formatting as a bulleted list enhances understanding of integrated concepts.

Other Definitions

• Healthcare consumers encompass patients, persons, clients, families, groups, communities, or populations.
• The term "healthcare consumer" signifies a proactive approach to health and wellness.
• Registered nurses (RNs) are state-licensed individuals prepared for practice with the title "nurse" or "professional nurse."
• Graduate-level prepared registered nurses hold advanced degrees and knowledge.
• Advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) complete graduate education with special licensure for certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), certified nurse-midwives (CNMs), clinical nurse specialists (CNSs), or certified nurse practitioners (CNPs).

Description of the Scope of Nursing Practice

• The Scope of Nursing Practice describes who, what, where, when, why, and how nursing practice functions and roles.
• Key aspects include nursing practice's dynamic, complex nature, and evolving boundaries, encompassing who, what, when, where, and how.
• Nursing occurs anytime, anywhere there's a healthcare consumer in need.
• It emphasizes a response to societal needs and a commitment to positive healthcare outcomes in a socially obligated way.

Development and Function of the Standards of Professional Nursing Practice

• Standards of Professional Nursing Practice accompany the Scope of Nursing Practice to provide authoritative statements of nursing actions and behaviors.
• These standards are expected to be performed competently by all nurses, regardless of role, population, specialty, and setting.
• They are context-dependent and may change with evolving nursing practice.
• They reflect nursing's application of critical thinking and the nursing process (assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation).
• Standards of Professional Performance describe the competent level of professional behavior, including leadership.
• The Standards also deal with review and revisions as required.

The Art and Science of Nursing

• Nursing is a learned profession informed by multiple ways of knowing (combining art and science).
• It promotes health, well-being, comfort, dignity, and humanity to individuals, families, groups, communities, and populations.
• Nursing's focus on healthcare consumers is enhanced by interprofessional collaboration, with particular emphasis on care and caring priorities and actions.
• Essential elements of nursing care include compassionate, comforting care; recognizing the unity of mind, body, and spirit in each person; understanding the human experience's contexts and cultural factors; and not considering the presence of illness as exclusive to the absence of health.

Care and Caring in Nursing Practice

• Caring acts as a foundational element to nursing practice.
• Effective caring involves aspects such as empathy, responsibility, communication, and a will and commitment to care. There is both inherent and avoidable suffering.
• Inherent suffering is due to illness.
• Avoidable suffering is resulting from systemic dysfunction or biases in care.
• Nurse-patient interactions that include respect, dignity, wholeness, and integrity contribute to healing.

Human Caring

• Human caring practices promote self-knowledge, self-control, and self-caring.
• Caring is reflected in the nursing compassion and use of skillful competencies.
• It's about understanding people's context and environment, including their values and knowledge around their condition.
• It's a process of respect for the care recipient's autonomy, grounded in ethics, involving empathy, values knowledge caring actions consequences a will, to nurture a commitment to care.
• Caring in nursing is a partnership involving competence and interpersonal sensitivity, and a moral foundation that supports actions to create an environment conducive to care for patients, families, groups, and communities.

Professional Nursing Model

• The new ANA Professional Nursing Model emphasizes the synergy of caring, values, wisdom, and energy supported by ethical principles.
• The model fosters continuous evolution and transformation and represents the seminal attributes of courage, endurance, passion, and creativity.
• It's framework provides an all encompassing idea of how to practice, based on the foundational elements of nursing.
• The caring part of the model is integrated with values, wisdom, and energy aspects to ensure that the entire practice of nursing is supported by ethics.

Nursing Process

• The nursing process is a framework of ethical analyses incorporating assessment, diagnosis, outcomes identification, planning, implementation, and evaluation. It's an iterative, dynamic, and cyclic approach that supports evidence-based practice.
• Practical methods for identifying, analyzing, and implementing ethical decisions include the concepts of principles, theories, and codes, and a recognition of practical circumstances.
• The nursing process serves as a guide for professional decision-making and identifies ethical issues.

Ethics for Nurses

• Nurses frequently face complex ethical issues, including conflicts surrounding treatment goals, informed consent, equity, and access to care.
• Key ethical competencies include awareness, ethical reasoning, motivation, and action, which depend on understanding the Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements.
• Rest's Four Component Model describes ethical competence components in moral development, including awareness/sensitivity, motivation, decision-making, and action.
• The Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements, the foundational document, describes a nurse's professional ideals and responsibilities toward self and others in clinical, organizational, and societal settings.
• Moral agency is dependent on understanding social justice contexts.

Professional Registered Nurses Today

• Professional licensure and education are specific to each U.S. state, commonwealth, or territory.
• Nurse practice acts, statutes, administrative codes, and regulatory processes govern nursing practice.
• Nurse education structures and practice vary across jurisdictions.
• RNs and APRNs' educational requirements, examinations, and certifications provide a framework to maintain legal licensure.
• This diversity emphasizes the importance of understanding local regulations.

Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs)

• CRNAs plan and deliver anesthesia to patients of various complexities across the lifespan.
• CRNAs practice in diverse settings including hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, and office-based settings.
• They administer anesthesia for various procedures.
• They use holistic, evidence-based, and cost-effective practices.

Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs)

• CNMs provide primary healthcare to pregnant, childbearing people, and women across the lifespan.
• They offer care across many areas, including preconception, pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period.
• CNMs independently assess, diagnose, treat, manage medications, including controlled substances, and interpret lab tests, to improve outcomes.

Certified Nurse Practitioners (CNPs)

• CNPs focus on comprehensive health care including taking histories, physical exams, and diagnoses to assist patients with acute and chronic illnesses.
• Services include prescribing medications, performing procedures (e.g., certain lab tests), ordering referrals, and providing counseling/education, all in diverse settings.

Organizations and Resources

• Various professional organizations address specific areas of nursing, such as the American College of Nurse Midwives, and other specialty organizations.
• These organizations often provide standards of practice, resources for ethical guidance, and educational programs to support nurses' professional development and maintaining professional licensure.