If you’ve been thinking about embarking on a career in healthcare, nursing is an area that’s well worth your attention. Nurses make a significant contribution to people’s health and well-being. With a nursing degree, you can transform lives, improving the way that people live day to day, and making them happier in the process. This article looks at some of the contributions that make nursing unique.

The Role Of Nursing In Health And Healthcare

A Holistic Approach

The role of a doctor is to treat disease. The role of a nurse is to promote, support, and maintain health. This distinction lies at the very root of healthcare philosophy, and it places nurses in a unique position where they focus on patients as whole people, looking at every aspect of their physical and emotional well-being. As such, nurses are very effective at finding the underlying causes of health problems, and they can help people in any condition, at any stage of life, to enjoy the best quality of health possible for them. They identify connections and fill in gaps between the work of other professionals.

Case Management

Where there are multiple different professionals involved in a particular patient’s care, nurses are frequently required to coordinate them all. Most people’s care needs are complex in early childhood and in their twilight years, while individuals with chronic illnesses such as diabetes or multiple sclerosis may need treatment from several different specialists on an ongoing basis. Nurses keep track of appointments, coordinate testing and make sure that notes are properly maintained. They help patients to navigate the system, and in some cases, they are able to make direct referrals where they feel that additional help is needed.

Expertise

Although they are often thought of as support professionals, nurses – today more than ever – are highly educated individuals with a considerable amount of expertise to bring to bear in their work. They often take the lead in areas such as injury management and wound care, and they carry out routine screening programs to reduce the risk of illness developing undetected. They deliver scheduled vaccinations and carry out blood tests, blood pressure checks, and other forms of health monitoring where appropriate. In light of our aging population, they provide essential support to family members and friends who are caring for people with various forms of dementia.

Prevention

Most people don’t go to see a doctor until they get ill. Nurses, on the other hand, routinely work to prevent people from getting ill in the first place, and when they encounter patients in hospital settings, they not only focus on the problems that brought them there but also aim to improve other aspects of their health. They provide advice on diet and exercise, help with the management of chronic symptoms to prevent them from getting worse, and assist people who want to overcome addictions. They also provide advice on how to avoid infectious illnesses and, where necessary, intervene at a community level to tackle endemic health problems.

Support In The Community

Where some healthcare professionals work primarily from hospitals, clinics, or offices, nurses go out into the community, visiting patients at home and in diverse social settings. They work in schools and care homes and even in-house at big corporations. They take healthcare to people who are not easily able to travel to receive it, and they encourage people to be proactive about getting check-ups and receiving health advice. The care that they provide to patients in a hospital doesn’t stop there, with follow-up support given to patients after they get home where necessary to minimize the risk of relapse.

Emotional Support

Today, it is increasingly well understood that looking after patients’ physical health is only half the battle. Some nurses specialize in providing psychiatric support, but all nurses have some training in basic counseling. They listen to people who don’t want to burden their loved ones or may simply have nobody in their lives who they feel that they can really talk. Providing this kind of support, and building up trusting relationships, can also help them to find out about health problems that patients find embarrassing to talk about. They can identify psychological barriers that interfere with access to treatment or make it hard for patients to stick to recommended routines.

Advocacy

In a system in which everybody is busy and has targets to meet, somebody has to stand up for patients whose cases are considered ‘difficult’ or not given the attention they need. Nurses routinely take on this task and advocate for their patients to get all the help they need. This is particularly important for disabled patients, who may not be able to access treatment in the usual way. In addition to this, they help patients to get assistance from allied professions such as social services where necessary, and assist them in dealing with family members who may disagree about the treatment they need. Through their rigorous training in institutes such as Holy Family University – which offers a Second Degree Distance Hybrid Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) that can be completed in just 14 months – nurses become skilled negotiators who can step in on behalf of patients who struggle to assert themselves.

Conclusion

By becoming a nurse, you can help people to engage with their health much more positively, whether they’re hospital patients already coping with the challenges of serious illness or members of the community who have yet to recognize how small changes in their habits could help them stay fit and well for much longer. You’ll empower people to take control of their health journeys and get more out of life while providing comfort to those who need it and standing up for people who struggle to get the proper support. Your patients will let you know how much you mean to them, and you’ll never doubt the fact that you are leading a useful life.