Nursing Expertise Self-Report Scale

Based upon the results of my questionnaire I have realized that I typically go on gut feeling for my nursing process with some data input. I tend to look at the patient, obtain verbal information of how they are feeling and what has been going on that caused them to have to come to this facility. I haven’t focused much on the policy and procedure guidelines at facilities until recently and after completing the questionnaire I feel that I really need to look further into this. I have been taught to be a hands-on nurse to sit and listen to my patient and use this data and my gut feelings in how I treat my patients and what I discuss with my doctor. Now I believe I will still include this style of nursing but also focus on the hard data such as labs and paperwork sent from the hospital including the physician’s history and physical. By focusing on these parts of information I can incorporate all areas of medicine in my plan of care for my patient. This will help me to minimize the possible errors made in communication from nurse to physician and nurse to patient. The nurse is the pathway of most information in healthcare and it is important to access all fields of information. I also believe it is important to have some form of professional relationship between the nurse and the patient. This helps to make the patient more comfortable and keeps the paths of communication open between nurse and patient. This can be a difficult process for many nurses but this can be an invaluable aspect to nursing. When our patients feel comfortable in speaking with us and feel that the conversation is open to whatever they have on their minds we obtain crucial information that could possibly be life saving. This also showed me that there are other nurses out there that are primarily analytical and focus only on data. This was slightly surprising because a nurse can use only the data to make medical decisions or recommendations that can be completely against the patient’s wishes. I will use this data in the future.