Why Is It Necessary For New Nurses To Receive Training?
Nursing has evolved profoundly over the last few decades, and it’s continuing to do so today. People perceived it as a mere caretaking profession that was very specific to women in history. Thankfully, today it’s far more diverse and inclusive of both genders.
Most people credit the mother of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, for this achievement. While that is true, technological evolution and some other factors have also played their part in the evolution of nursing into becoming the profession it is today.
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Introduction to Why Is It Necessary For New Nurses To Receive Training?
Nursing wasn’t perceived as a clinical practice during its initial years. Women in nursing used to learn the necessary skills from their mothers or other acquaintances in the same line of work.
The entire occupation had a somewhat negative connotation associated with it. Even today, some people see nurses as people who change diapers or replace IVs.
Little do they know nurses in the upper hierarchy have a bigger say than doctors in a healthcare unit. Today, we have formal education, countless training programs, and vast certifications to train and qualify nurses for professional growth.
Fortunately, it is now a far more prestigious profession than in the 19th century.
The diversity of nurses isn’t just limited to clinical care. Some nurses devote their life to training and educating novice nurses for leadership and professional growth.
Nurses who are qualified and experienced enough to provide emotional mentorship and training are eligible to become nurse educators. It is one of the highest and prestigious ranks in this profession.
To become a nurse educator, you’ll need to obtain the highest qualification there is, i.e., a DNP for nurse educators. After all, training new nurses equate to shaping the future of this profession. Continue reading to know why training is so important.
Closing the Gap between Theory and Practice
Nursing school fills students to the brim with an overwhelming amount of theoretical knowledge. However, the real world, AKA the healthcare environment, is far more complex and challenging than demonstrated in the books. New nurses encounter various testing situations that aren’t even stated in their books.
Plus, new nurses take some time to normalize seeing blood, death, and graphic sights in the hospitals.
The entire training scenario isn’t even about honing the skills you learned in nursing school, at least not entirely. It’s about emotional preparation to deal with all those situations. After all, you’ll consistently be facing severely ill patients mourning families.
These people have lost the will to live, aggressive patients, confused and anxious people in the ER, doctors who are always in a rush, etc.
You’ll have to keep up with all of them and learn from those experiences. Sometimes your efforts will go unappreciated, but you’ll learn to keep your head. Training will help you to do just that.
Foster Skills That Aren’t There In the Books
Nursing degrees will tell you what the necessary skills are to be successful nurses. Training programs will help you foster and implement those skills.
By skills, we aren’t referring to how proficiently you can maintain patient history or read scans and x-rays. We are talking about soft skills that play an integral part in a nurse’s career.
These skills may include communication, collaboration, time management, confidence, networking, critical evaluation, empathy, problem identification and resolution, conflict management, adaptability, stress management, and, most importantly, emotional intelligence.
Nurses need communication skills to communicate with patients and doctors effectively. They need to communicate all the bad news in a concealed way to keep the patients emotionally uplifted. Their tone must always be polite and empathetic.
Walking up to a dying patient and telling them that their time in this world has come to an end is the last thing you want to do. Similarly, nurses need clear communication to brief doctors with the patient’s medical history and present condition. All of this plays a major role in determining an accurate diagnosis to proceed with the treatment.
When dealing with life and death situations, nurses need to be punctual and skillful in performing their tasks. Even a delay of a few minutes can cost someone their life or worsen their already deteriorating condition.
Similarly, nurses need to be confident in their approach. Confusion and doubts will only haze their thinking and decision-making, causing problems in a patient’s treatment and ultimately risking their lives.
It can get severely overwhelming for new nurses, and time alone cannot make them adjust to the daunting environment.
An essential part of nursing training is teaching stress management. Training teaches nurses tips and tricks to alleviate stress and anxiety, keep up with their work, and avoid burnout. They may also perform yoga and meditation to preserve their mental health regularly.
Teaching Nursing Etiquette and Professional Decorum
One thing that has remained constant in this profession is creating a hospitable environment for the patients. Nurses are obliged to treat their patients as if they are guests in a luxury hotel. It is to ensure comfort during a patient’s difficult and painful time.
Making them feel at home also reduces their stress and makes treatment far more convenient than it would have been otherwise.
The same hospitality also allows patients to build a relationship of trust with their healthcare professionals. It plays an essential part in determining the outcomes of their treatment. A comfortable environment makes them heal better and faster.
In older times, nurses were taught how to walk, talk, dress, and serve (medications, of course), even when formal training for nurses did not exist.
They wore neat and clean clothes at all times to appear as sophisticated as possible. Nurses are supposed to maintain extremely professional conduct profoundly because of the social stigma that sexualizes nurses.
In the 20th century, nursing became a derogatory profession that was only open to prostitutes. A law required prostitutes to either go to prison or become nurses.
Therefore, nurses of today need to invest extra efforts in professionalism to abolish this image.
Conclusion
Nursing has come a long way since the 18th century to become what it is today. Thankfully, it is a far more diverse profession today with the availability of online education, advanced qualifications, and certifications that allow nursing to climb the ladder in their career.
Even when these qualifications allow you to learn all the necessary professional skills, training makes you capable enough to implement them.
It also teaches you professionalism and important soft skills that you can not learn through theory.
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Chibueze Uchegbu is a certified medical physiologist with a great passion for healthy living.