Question

AACN BSN Essential VIII clearly calls for BSN graduates to appreciate nursing history and its impact on today's professional nursing practice. As you consider your future professional nursing practice, tell us how you will share stories and lessons from nursing history with your nursing colleagues; and how lessons from nursing history will impact your own future nursing practice.

Answer 1

Sharing first-person clinical narrative can improve patient care, reduce costs, and increase patient, family, and staff satisfaction and this can be achieved through story telling which a powerful tool that is influential. Nursing is a profession with rich stories coupled with facts thus when such stories are shared, listened, they help nurses to feel more respected, motivate, energize and make appropriate decisions as they will reflect on their own experience which translates to quality care and services to the patients and better performance (JNCQ, 2004). Nothing helps to gives new insight or improves knowledge effectively as sharing it. Ways to share my stories and lesion learned is through collaboration and communication among team members and providers which involves stories about errors, near misses, ethics etc which can help improve quality and safety (Scheckel, 2009). Another way is through Mentoring which involves sharing hard learned lesions acquired over the years of studying or practicing. Mentoring is good avenue as when there exist a strong partnership, both people learns and get new perspectives about their nursing work or practice (Scivicque, 2013).  Also, writing articles or post on publication which caters to the nursing profession is a good way to share my story because nothing is more empowering than putting one's thoughts out there for the others to see (Scivicque, 2013).Teaching others and being a resource is another way. We come across important information coupled with our experiences on daily basis, sharing that could be beneficial to our colleagues without waiting for a formal training plan or a request for help (Scivicque, 2013).

Quality improvement and safety has been a priority in nursing history and because of the attention on medical errors in the recent years, these factors as taken a different level of importance. Lesions learned will prepare differently to understand the practice, ways to improve quality and the principles of minimizing medical errors (). Another is evidence-based practice which is a model to the nursing practice where nurses draw on best available evidence for decision making (). In my practice this will help me utilize research studies and theories within nursing and other profession in clinical decision making (Scheckel, 2008).

References:

Journal of Nursing Care Quality. (2004). Storytelling, a tool for leadership to change culture. Listen to nurses stories. Vol19(1 ), p 74 - 75

Scheckel M. (2008). Nursing education: Past, present and future. Jones & Barlett learning. Retrieved from http://www.jblearning.com/samples/0763752258/52258_CH02_Roux.pdf

Scivicque C. (2013). five ways to share professional expertise and four reasons you should. FORBES. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2013/07/25/5-ways-to-share-your-professional-expertise-and-4-reasons-you-should/2/#1ca6ef2071b9