Evolution of Nursing Profession

Nursing Practice Today
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Nursing is one of the most significant professions in healthcare that makes up the majority of the workforce. Nurses are patients' first point of contact and act as patient advocates. The paper explores the evolution of the nursing profession, preparation differences between the ADN and BSN nursing professions, and their scope of practice while also applying the differences in how they would handle a specific client situation and discuss the significance of applying EBP to nursing care. Finally, it incorporates a discussion of how nurses communicate and collaborate with interdisciplinary teams and how this supports more effective patient outcomes.
Explain how nursing practice has changed over time and how this evolution has changed the scope of practice and the approach to treating the individual.
Nursing is an ever-evolving profession that demands the people who work with it to translate and adapt to the environment. The changes in the nursing profession can mainly be attributed to the changing landscape of the healthcare system, changing technologies, and changing population profiles. Initially, nursing homes did not exist; nursing care was provided at homes and through community midwives. Florence Nightingale, in the 1800s, participated in creating a health commission that emphasized hygiene in inpatient care and created the requirement for nurses to have education changing the nursing practice (Silva & Ferreira, 2021). More progress was made toward an evidence-based nursing profession focusing on specialty clinics such as children’s and mental health facilities. The introduction of primary healthcare at the Alma Ata Conference significantly shaped the nursing practice as more emphasis was laid on primary healthcare, making the nurses participate with an equal level of responsibility (Blanco-Fraile et al., 2022). Later, the nursing practice evolved to patient-centered care, where nurses began to focus on each patient's unique needs while considering their cultural background and emotional needs. 21st-century nursing has changed to the improvement of patient care, thanks to technology-aided services such as telehealth and EHR.
Compare the differentiated practice competencies between an associate (ADN) and baccalaureate (BSN) education in nursing. Explain how scope of practice changes between an associate and baccalaureate nurse.
ADN nurse undergoes a 2-year associate degree offered in community colleges, while BSN nurse goes for a 4-year baccalaureate program in senior universities and colleges, though they all sit for the NCLEX-RN licensing examination. The difference between the ADN and BSN nurses mainly lies in differentiated nursing competencies. The ADN nurses receive basic education, which includes theory work, clinical assessment, and patient care. In contrast, BSN nurses receive a wider scope, including primary education, leadership, and critical thinking skills (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2019). As a result of this difference, the scope of their practice is also prone to change as the BSN nurses are more prepared to take up leadership roles. Additionally, with care in hospital settings becoming increasingly difficult, nurses must take critical thinking steps for the frailer population. Care in this setting is turning to more sophisticated and life-saving technologies combined with complex information management systems (Harrison et al., 2019). The BSN nurse would be more appropriate for this as they are better equipped. BSN nurses are also involved in developing education plans for the community as they are more experienced in evidence-based practice, which allows them to integrate their new findings.
Identify a specific client care situation and describe how nursing care, or decision-making approaches, differs between the BSN‐prepared nurse and the ADN nurse.
The ADN and BSN nurse tend to have differences in the nursing care situation due to their differences in training. For instance, for a patient with a wound that is not healing, the ADN nurse may focus primarily on wound care techniques, including dressing the wound and managing the drainage. They may even consider checking the patients' vitals to assess signs of infection. On the other hand, the BSN nurse may use critical thinking to approach decision-making, such as conducting a comprehensive assessment of the wound, including factors such as the patient's nutrition that may be affecting the healing of the wound. They may als...