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Nursing and the 20th Century

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Submitted By atlien927
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Growing Need for Nurses Based on Immigration Trends
Dr.
02/25/2012

The word “profession” is very generally defined as a vocation dependent on specialized training, with a purpose of supplying advice and service to others, for monetary compensation, without the expectation of other gain. Contemporary health care in my experience as a nurse can be defined as symbiotic relationship between nurses, doctors, paraprofessionals, patients, and insurance companies. This multifaceted symbiotic relationship has each involved party complementing and enhancing the other for reasons that often independent of each other. Nurses often act as the intermediaries between doctors and the families of patients, while also servicing patients to insure a return to health along with being held accountable to the facilities who employ them. Nursing, meets the generally accepted definition of a profession based on the above listed standards: Although there is no overall consensus as to what constitutes the proper attributes of a profession, the following characteristics are commonly noted: a unique body of knowledge, altruistic service to society, a code of ethics, significant education and socialization, and autonomy in practice, i.e. reasonable independence in decision-making about practice and control of the work situation and conditions. While it could be argued that nursing meets many of these criteria, it is clear that it does not now and never did have autonomy, understood as the ability to control its own work – a major characteristic of a profession. (Liaschenko & Peter, 2004)

Sweeping federal laws have recently been passed that offer universal health care of citizens of the United States on a scale that has never been attempted before. The bill expressly excludes coverage for individuals who are in the United States illegally. With this exclusion and the

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