Barriers to Professionalization of Nursing
Nursing is a profession that involves direct interaction with different people across the demographic groups to provide health care that can enable the restoration and enhancement of their health and prevent death. Professional nurses hence have the responsibilities to ensure they provide the services without biases or prejudice. However, this is not always the case with the patients. Some patients can have preconceptions about obtaining care from nurses of certain gender, race, age, religion, color, or nationality. For examples, some female patients prefer and feel they must receive health care from female nurses especially if the type of care involves exposing their body to the nurse. Some female patients also have preconceptions that male nurses provide a better care than female nurses. It is also common to find some patients questioning a young patient’s competence in the work especially if they know that he/she is new in the profession or on an internship. It is, therefore, the nurses’ responsibility to try and restore the patients’ trust in his or her work through the use of their communication skills and interpersonal skills. They should also have confidence in themselves and their professional identity to avoid taking such prejudices personally (HABIBZADEH, P17).
Time constraint is a barrier that often hinders nurses from implementing some of their knowledge in the profession, especially evidence-based practices. The practices are updated every now and then to ensure they are always the best. Due to the often busy life of a nurse, some nurses are unable to study these practices for application in their work. Balancing social life and professional life becomes a challenge for most of them. As time constraint cannot be an excuse for the negative outcome in a patient’s care, nurses should draft a timetable for their professional and social life and be sure to set aside some time to grow professionally by such acts as reading nursing literature.