Nurse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A nurse is responsible—along with other health care professionals—for the treatment, safety, and recovery of acutely or chronically ill or injured people, health maintenance of the healthy, and treatment of life-threatening emergencies in a wide range of health care settings. Nurses may also be involved in medical and nursing research and perform a wide range of non-clinical functions necessary to the delivery of health care. Nurses also provide care at birth and death.
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[edit] Education and regulation
Nursing education, regulation, roles, and titles vary in different countries, but in general reflect an increasing level of responsibility and status.The nursing career structure does not vary throughout the world. Typically there are several distinct levels of nursing practitioner distinguished by increasing education, responsibility, and skills. The major distinction is between task-based nursing and professional nursing. Nurses throughout the world are increasingly employed as advanced practice nurses, such as clinical nurse specialists and nurse practitioners, who diagnose health problems and prescribe medications and other therapies. At the top of the educational ladder is the doctoral-prepared nurse. Nurses may gain a PhD or another doctoral degree, specializing in research, clinical nursing, and so forth. These nurses practice nursing, teach nursing, and carry out nursing research. As the science and art of nursing has advanced, so has the demand for doctoral-prepared nurses.
In various parts of the world, the educational background for nurses varies widely. In some parts of eastern Europe, nurses are high school graduates with twelve to eighteen months of training. In contrast, Chile requires any registered nurse to have at least a bachelor's degree.
Nurses are the largest group of providers in the health care system--there are over two million registered nurses in the United States of America (U.S.) alone, comprising about 13% of the fifteen million workers in the health care and social assistance category tracked by the U.S. Department of Labor.[1]
Nursing is one of the most female-dominated occupations but the number of males entering the profession is increasing quickly. For example, in the U.S., only 5.4% of the registered nurse population was male in 2000, but that percent represented a 226% increase in two decades.[2].
Governments regulate the profession of nursing to protect the public.
[edit] Other healthcare workers
Health care settings generally involve a wide range of medical professionals who work in collaboration with nurses.
Examples include:
- Nursing assistants, orderlies, auxiliary nurses, healthcare assistants. These types of healthcare workers work both in acute and primary settings, under the supervision of registered nurses or licensed practical nurses (in the US). They assist nurses by giving basic care, taking vital signs, administering hygienic care, assisting with feeding, giving basic psychosocial care, housekeeping, and similar duties. See also hospital volunteers.
- EMTs and Paramedics work closely with emergency and critical care nurses to stabilize life-threatening trauma and medical emergencies and to provide a seamless transfer of care from incoming ambulances to awaiting medical/surgical teams.
- Technicians: for example, certified medication aides in the US, are trained to administer medications in a long-term care setting. There are also phlebotomy technicians, who perform venipuncture; surgical technologists (US), and technicians trained to operate most kinds of diagnostic and laboratory equipment, such as X-ray machines, electrocardiographs, and so forth.
- Physicians rely on nurses' skills, observations, and experience to ensure a continuity of patient care.
- Pharmacists and pharmacy assistants are responsible for the safe dispensing of medicine and offering of expert advice on drug therapies.
- Allied health professionals such as respiratory therapists, medical technologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, operating department practitioners (UK) and physical therapists work closely with nursing staff and work collaboratively in multi-disciplinary.
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