Career Planning and Professional Identity Paper
Career Planning and Professional Identity Paper
Career Planning and Professional Identity Paper
Part I: Introduction
[Student will complete this part]
Part II: Current Roles
Clinical Nursing Role
I am a postpartum nurse at the practice site, working with patients and their babies after delivery. My primary responsibility is adopting my range of skills to care for mothers, babies, and their families, including monitoring for complications in the patient and the baby and educating and supporting the mothers and families. Core responsibilities in helping with recovery after delivery include evaluating for postpartum hemorrhage, assessing whether epidurals or anesthesia have worn off before moving the patient, facilitating skin-to-skin bonding, monitoring vital signs, helping new parents with recovery through wound care, physical assistance, and medication administration, and conducting newborn assessments like blood draws and first bath (Hamlin, 2022). Additionally, I educate mothers and families on newborn care, breastfeeding, and postpartum recovery strategies and offer breastfeeding assistance and emotional support. The career traits that allow me to perform these roles include effective communication, teaching skills, empathy, listening, and physical stamina.
Education Roles
I partake in preceptor roles at the practice site, teaching and supporting new employees and nursing students. The goal is to prepare aspiring nurses because I have the experience and expertise to help new nurses and nursing students navigate the healthcare environment and develop the practice experience necessary to become professional nurses (Wilkes University, 2021). I work closely with students during clinical rotations to help translate theoretical learning into clinical practice. I work with nurses and students at all levels of nursing education, including those with master’s, bachelor’s, and post-graduate degrees. Moreover, I mentor students and new nurses to encourage mutual professional growth via dynamic and supportive relationships. Career traits that support my education roles include enthusiasm for teaching, passion for nursing, ability to encourage autonomy, ability to offer constructive feedback, and empathy.
Leadership Experiences and Characteristics
Leadership experiences include being a postpartum nurse educator and educating new nurses in the field. Preceptors need great leadership skills to support and guide new nurses and nursing students through the practice environment. Leadership traits that promote my preceptor roles include possessing and demonstrating broad knowledge, the ability to describe the basis of action and decisions, and answering questions clearly and concisely (Wilkes University, 2021). I am open to conflicting ideas and opinions, can connect theoretical or specific information to broader concepts, and communicate clear goals and expectations. Additionally, I am a humble, emphatic, highly approachable, and inspiring preceptor who adopts a transformational leadership style, expecting the best from the nurses and students I work with.
Part III: Levels of Competence
The Dreyfus model demonstrates how people progress through several levels of knowledge and skills acquisition, including novice, competent, proficient, expert, and master levels. Per this model, I am a competent clinician, preceptor, and novice leader. I have been an RN for over a year and gained enough practice experience and competence. As a clinician, I base most of my decisions and judgement on previous experience, although I still refer back to the rules and adopt analytical processes (Mangiante & Peno, 2021). Notably, the practice problems I deal with now are more complex, and it is more challenging to adhere to a textbook script because of situational differences and the demand for critical thinking. I am more oriented to problem-solving and integrating personal judgement to prioritize elements. I am also more emotionally invested in clinical activities, taking greater responsibility for success and failure in the practice environment.
I am a competent educator, having worked with several new nurses and nursing students. As a preceptor, I adopt my learned experience and personal judgement to guide students through clinical activities. I also adopt context-free principles, concepts, and situational elements to understand the new nurses and students I work with. Additionally, I can select rules and perspectives suitable for different situations and take responsibility for my decisions (Mangiante & Peno, 2021). I focus more on what is crucial in different situations because the number of potentially relevant elements and factors I can recognize are overwhelming. I have a lot to learn to be a more proficient educator. However, I still rely on instructions, although integrating learned experience, to develop teaching plans, easing understanding and decision-making. Situations differ in multiple ways, and it is difficult to prepare a list of possible ones that would require my intervention as an educator; hence it is impossible to predefine strategies for each situation. Therefore, integrating the experience into instructions helps select plans and perspectives that are more important and appropriate in each teaching instance.
My only leadership experience as a postpartum nurse is being a preceptor working with new nurses and nursing students. I consider myself a novice leader because I have a long way to go to attain competency and proficiency in leadership. More leadership opportunities and experiences would be integral in achieving higher development levels. As a leader, I rely on the analytical process to decide the course of action in problem-solving (Mangiante & Peno, 2021). Although I am a novice in leadership, I am committed to my preceptor role because I want my students to succeed and be well-prepared for future nursing roles. Most leadership decisions I make are based on rules and evidence-based guidelines, hoping to gain more experience to integrate into the decision-making process.
(Career Planning and Professional Identity Paper)
Part IV: Professional Identity
I am a dedicated, self-driven, motivated, and goal-oriented postpartum nurse seeking to enhance the health and well-being of mothers, babies, and their families. Professional nurses, including postpartum nurses, are integral to patients’ lives (Poorchangizi et al., 2019). Besides, I am a nurse who expects the best from everyone and will give the best in every situation to promote optimal outcomes. Giving birth is a crucial life stage for the mother and the baby that I always want to be part of. Seeing people bring life is an amazing experience I am involved in daily to ensure patients get the best care. Additionally, I am compassionate, empathetic, and emotionally available for my patients, and I promote holistic care to ease and quicken the recovery processes and reduce the stay between delivery and discharge from the hospital. Moreover, I work well with teams, and I am collaborative and an effective communicator, which is needed in the delivery room to ensure the highly-dangerous procedure is successful and promote the safety of the mother and the baby. Generally, I love my work as a professional nurse and will continue to demonstrate professionalism in patient care.
My core values as a nurse include empathy, autonomy, altruism, accountability, compassion, and curiosity. I also treat people with dignity and ensure integrity, honesty, and social justice in my practice roles. These core values promote professionalism, which entails respecting patients’ interests, promoting humanism, practicing social responsibility, and being sensitive to other people’s values, backgrounds, cultures, worldviews, and preferences (Cao et al., 2023). Furthermore, I have high standards of competence and knowledge and demonstrate high ethical standards guided by my personal moral practices and the nursing ethical code of standards. My core values as a nurse serve as the foundation of my professional practice, informing my actions, decisions, and relationships with patients and co-workers. For instance, patients in the delivery room are often overwhelmed with pain and emotions, and values like empathy, compassion, and respect for human dignity allow me to understand the patient and be sensitive to their needs and values. Some patients value privacy, while others a family member’s emotional support. Conclusively, being empathetic allows me to relate to the patient’s circumstances and create an environment that promotes the best care and enhances the patient experience.
I want to achieve proficiency and mastery levels of skills and knowledge acquisition in nursing practice. I have over one year of experience as a clinical nurse, and I want to gain more experience, knowledge, and skills to achieve my career goals and objectives. Attaining a bachelor’s degree means I am more knowledgeable about patient care technology, research, evidence-based practice, health promotion, and healthcare system safety and quality (Maddocks, 2022). Moreover, the degree enhances my career readiness because I can critically evaluate clinical situations and be a more effective nurse. I can integrate and balance research, personal experience, patient values, and clinical knowledge to make better clinical decisions. Additionally, acquiring the degree implies that I am a career-focused nurse who wants to grow to a higher level and be more influential in nursing practice and patient care, with more ability and capacity to engage in decisions and advocate for my patients and profession.
(Career Planning and Professional Identity Paper)
References
Cao, H., Song, Y., Wu, Y., Du, Y., He, X., Chen, Y., Wang, Q., & Yang, H. (2023). What is nursing professionalism? a concept analysis. BMC Nursing, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-022-01161-0
Hamlin, K. (2022, November 29). What is a postpartum nurse? | Nursejournal.org. NurseJournal. https://nursejournal.org/careers/postpartum-nurse/
Maddocks, K. G. (2022, October 6). What is a BSN? Is there a difference between an RN and a BSN? Southern New Hampshire University – On Campus & Online Degrees | SNHU. https://www.snhu.edu/about-us/newsroom/health/what-is-a-bsn
Mangiante, E. M. S., & Peno, K. (Eds.). (2021). Teaching and Learning for Adult Skill Acquisition: Applying the Dreyfus and Dreyfus Model in Different Fields. IAP.
Poorchangizi, B., Borhani, F., Abbaszadeh, A., Mirzaee, M., & Farokhzadian, J. (2019). The importance of professional values from nursing students’ perspective. BMC Nursing, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-019-0351-1
Wilkes University. (2021, June 17). Preceptors needed: The 10 benefits of being a preceptor. Online Nursing Programs | Wilkes University Online. https://onlinenursingdegrees.wilkes.edu/preceptors-needed-10-benefits-being-preceptor/
