Nursing Code of Ethics, Essay Example

When the needs of the patient are beyond the qualification and competencies of the nurse, consultation and collaboration must be sought from qualified nurses, other health professionals, or other appropriate sources. This speaks to me in a very real way because it both limits and increases my level of responsibility as a nurse. I have to decide if my own work-load has become too heavy to attend to the special needs of certain patients, or if those special needs are greater than my experience and training can safely handle. So at a certain point my duties are given to someone else, or at least shared with someone else. I have the responsibility to decide this. I become my own manager first before being a manager of others or being managed by them. This is probably the first lesson learned on the hospital floor by student nurses.

The nurse is also responsible for monitoring the activities of these individuals and evaluating the quality of the care provided. This will speak to me more and more in the future as my experience and training allows me to supervise the staff junior to me. I will be responsible for them, either directly or indirectly. But it also speaks to me and any other student nurses now. When the code says monitoring the activities of these individuals it also means for me to learn from the people I have notified when my duties have become greater than my ability to meet them. As I watch and learn from those people, I will be able to do more and more such duties myself, or at least learn which persons best to notify when certain needs arise. I will become more useful — the seeking of help is how we learn on the job and grow.

Both quotes are really about learning on the job. This is different than learning in the classroom or from reading a book, or taking a test. All of those are necessary, but are different from the learning you get while actually working with real patients. Learning on the job is really about accepting responsibility for the things you learn about, the things that you do after learning them, and the things that you teach others as a result of your experience and training.