Facts About Nursing

Article shared from NurseTogether

Becoming a registered nurse is the ultimate goal for a lot of men and women looking to enter the medical field. Registered nurses work directly with patients to provide care and have a wealth of knowledge and skills to offer, but there might be a few things that you didn’t know about registered nurses. Without further ado, here are 45 fun, interesting and surprising facts about registered nurses.

Nursing Facts

1. Florence Nightingale, a British nurse, and statistician, is considered to be the mother of modern nursing for her influence on how nurses were educated and viewed by society.

2. Florence Nightingale shaped the healthcare industry during the Crimean War when she introduced the concepts of hand hygiene, fresh air for patients, cleaning tools between patients, and other sanitation practices which resulted in saving many soldiers’ lives.

3. Florence Nightingale lived from 1820 to 1910 and was born in Italy although she was raised in England. She established the first scientifically-based nursing school 1860 appropriately named the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas Hospital in London.

4. The symbol for nursing is a lamp. Florence Nightingale was famous for carrying a lamp with her at night as she made her way between the tents of wounded and ill soldiers during the Crimean War, and was often referred to as “the lady with the lamp”. She also made the white nursing cap, used to hold hair back, famous and synonymous with the nursing profession.

5. Nursing caps are now usually only worn in ceremonies, often during graduation ceremonies for new nurses to symbolize their welcome into the profession. The famous hats have stopped being worn due to the fact that they can collect microbes (bacteria and viruses) and become unsanitary.

6. Nurses are considered one of the most trustworthy and ethical professions in the United States. In the year 2020, nurses were voted the #1 most trustworthy and ethical professionals for the 18^th year in a row. The nursing profession beats out doctors, policemen, firemen, teachers, and even clergy.

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Learn more about Nursing:

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  • BSN Job Opportunities
  • BSNs are Important

Nurses Do Make A Difference

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of spending some time in the hospital, you may know first hand how important nurses can be. When you’re feeling anxious, scared and sick, the care and compassion of a good nurse can soothe and help you feel calm and collected. In short, nurses can help make devastating and stressful times somewhat easier for patients and their families, all while providing valuable assistance to doctors.

Here are five additional ways nurses can make a difference:

Nurses Teach the Community

Unlike nurses who work in a hospital setting and care for a handful of patients on a daily basis, public health nurses can care for entire communities. In this capacity, they are able to educate large groups of people about health issues while improving the community’s health and safety and increasing access to quality care.

Public health nurses have many important duties such as advocating with local, state and federal authorities to improve access to services for those who are generally under-served in the community. They are also responsible for monitoring health trends and identifying risks that are unique to the local population, as well as designing and implementing educational campaigns and prevention events like immunizations and screenings.

Nurses Improve Quality Care

In recent years, America’s hospitals have begun numerous initiatives aimed at improving the quality of patient care, and nurses play an integral and pivotal role in these efforts. Nurses are at the front lines of improving patient outcomes by decreasing the lengths-of-stay, hospital-acquired pneumonia, pressure ulcers, deep vein thrombosis and mortality rates.

Nurses Act as Patient Advocates

Besides sharing and acting on their vast amount of medical knowledge, nurses also act as their patient’s advocate. In fact, there are three core values that help construct the basis of nursing advocacy:

Preserving Human Dignity

Every human being has the right to be treated with respect, and it is nurses that help ensure their patients receive the respect they deserve. Nurses make sure patients’ concerns are being addressed and cultural and ethnic beliefs are being respected, and remain considerate of patient privacy issues.

Patient Equality

Good nurses are a bit like saints in that they have the unique ability to provide the same level of professionalism and compassion for all patients, without allowing personal biases to influence their behavior or practice.

Freedom from Suffering

The desire to help other human beings is often the driving force for those who become nurses. By helping to prevent and manage suffering, whether that suffering is physical, mental or emotional, nurses can make the greatest difference in the lives of the patients they treat.

Nurses Provide Emotional Support

When patients are admitted into a hospital setting, they often need emotional support as they struggle with fears and anxieties. A nurse’s compassion, humor and willingness to listen can help provide patients with a level of comfort and security and may help make them feel they have more control over their challenging circumstances. This emotional support can be invaluable to a patient’s overall well-being.

Nurses Change Lives

Nurses can make an incredible difference in the quality of care given to patients all across the country. By educating communities, advocating for patients’ rights and offering emotional support in the most troubling of times, nurses don’t just help improve patient outcomes, they can literally help change lives.

Nurses Making A Difference and Touching Lives

Article shared from Daily Nurse The Pulse of Nursing

Nurses are givers, and most will agree that they didn’t join the profession for the high salaries, fancy clothes, sexy shoes, or awesome accessories. Instead, nurses are more likely to say they chose nursing because they wanted to help people. Some will tell stories of caring for a beloved family member and how that inspired them to a life of service as a healthcare professional. Touching lives is generally what it’s all about, and in doing so, nurses make an enormous difference in the world around them.

Touching Lives

In patient care in the acute setting, nurses are the ones with whom patients interact the most. While attending physicians, hospitalists, or specialists will stop in to examine the patient, write orders, and talk with colleagues, their visits are short in the scheme of things. Yet, the reality is that nurses are the ones who carry those orders forward and act as the eyes and ears of the physicians. After all, assertive and thoughtful nurses push back when an order feels wrong, or they disagree with the medical plan of care. In this way, the nurse is the patient’s strongest ally and advocate.

It’s not simply in the hospital where nurses touch lives — after all, only approximately 55 percent of nurses work in acute care. Nurses touch lives in schools, summer camps, occupational health, research, home health, hospice, public health, dialysis, urgent care, ambulatory surgery, case management, etc.

The nine-year-old child with a trach and g-tube could not properly receive their education if a nurse couldn’t provide the expert skilled care needed to keep that child safe and healthy. The family caregivers of a patient dying of pancreatic cancer would not be able to have their loved one in the home without the attention of a hospice nurse. A post-op nurse is central to a safe post-surgical discharge in the day surgery suite. The public health nurse involved in the pandemic is an indispensable asset. And a Legionnaire’s outbreak on a cruise ship can be expertly handled by the onboard nurse trained to respond to such urgent situations while at sea.

Many nurses can tell numerous stories about caring for their family members and neighbors and being called on whenever a friend needs medical advice. Nurses are frequently asked to examine sick children in their neighborhood and give their opinion on the urgent veterinary needs of the pets belonging to family members, acquaintances, and friends. And since nurses are the largest segment of the healthcare workforce in the U.S., they can frequently be first on the scene when a car accident occurs, an older woman suffers a stroke in a local diner, or someone falls and hits their head and breaks their arm at the mall.

The lives touched by nurses are legion, and the benefits bestowed by nurses on society are innumerable. Changing the world around them comes naturally to nurses, and touching lives with care and expertise is crucial to nurses’ power.

Making a Difference

Nurses make a difference through their knowledge, training, and compassion, whether at a school, on a street corner, in the ICU or ED, or at a summer camp for children living with cancer. 

Nurses have been called the lifeblood, the mitochondria, and the connective tissue of healthcare. Without nurses, the healthcare system would grind to a halt. Considering vocational/practical nurses, RNs, advanced practice nurses, and those with terminal degrees, the societal impact of nurses is incalculable. Yet, even without the annual Gallup poll telling us so, we know that the public trusts nurses, and for a good reason. This special group of citizens who join this praiseworthy profession are intrinsic to the health of individuals, entire communities, and nations. It’s a simple summation and indisputable fact: nurses make a difference, touch lives, and change the world. 

Daily Nurse is thrilled to feature Keith Carlson, “Nurse Keith,” a well-known nurse career coach and podcaster of The Nurse Keith Show as a guest columnist. Check back every other Thursday for Keith’s column.

Learn more about Nursing:

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RN Versus BSN: The Differences

RN vs. BSN

Changes in nursing involve a major shift in higher education standards, requiring more nurses to hold a 4-year bachelor of science in nursing (BSN). The new requirements stem from research by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that showed significantly improved patient outcomes when there was an increase in BSNs.

BSN, ADN, RN: The Difference in The Letters

Of course, all nurses are rigorously trained to provide patient care. Let’s review the different levels of training for each position by taking a closer look at the letters that come after a nurse’s name. BSN means bachelor of science in nursing, ADN means associate degree in nursing, and RN means registered nurse.

• BSN is a diploma from a 4-year program: A person with a BSN has graduated from a four-year nursing program at a college, university, or nursing school.
• ADN is a diploma from a 2-year program: A person with an ADN has graduated from a two-year nursing school.
• RN is a certification: A person with the RN designation has passed a national licensing exam—after graduating from a nursing program with a BSN or an ADN. The licensing exam is called NCLEX (National Council Licensure Examination), and it’s a nationwide test required to license nurses.

So, if you’re an RN with a two-year ADN, are there reasons to go back to school and earn your four-year BSN degree? Well, that depends on you and your goals. But thousands of students and nurses are getting their BSN—and many of them are doing it in direct response to the IOM recommendation for more nurses to be BSN-prepared. If the IOM says that more BSNs are better for patient health, then nurses everywhere are going to respond.

Here are 5 reasons why you might want to pursue a BSN degree:

1. Open the doors for a teaching position;
2. Upward mobility and career development;
3. Salary;
4. Stand out in the applicant pool;
5. Be the difference and make a difference in patient care.

Sumner College’s new BSN degree program can be completed in less than 3 years. No prerequisites courses are required and we accept transfer credits. Learn more today by visiting www.sumnercollege.com