Nurs in the Eye of Patients

NURSES IN THE EYES OF PATIENTS

When people come to see a doctor they do not only meet doctor but also a nurse. In hospital, nurses work for an expert doctor or as part of a team to assess, plan implement and evaluate healthcare. In many cases, they work to help patients during the day and night. They help patients for a daily need. Generally, nurses perform a wide range of clinical and non-clinical functions necessary to the delivery of health care.

Nurses may work in occupational health settings such as free-standing clinics and physician offices, or nurse-run clinics. Many of them work as a team in hospital.

In hospital, one of the most important responsibilities of a nurse is to monitor a patient’s vital signs and record significant changes. Keeping an eye on a patient’s blood pressure, pulse, temperature, and respiration are important to realizing whether a patient is getting better or worse. As a result, nursing assistants are usually the first to know how well a patient is responding to a medicine or treatment method. They check the patient’s vital signs regularly and routinely, and report any new health issues or side effects, negative or positive improvements, and other significant changes.

Nursing assistants are also responsible for maintaining a patient’s personal hygiene while they are in the hospital, and/or medical facility. Some of these tasks include, but are not limited to helping the patients to shave, take their baths, and clipping their nails. They may also assist in dressing and undressing patients who are unable to perform these tasks for themselves. Another separate, but closely related duty is to facilitate a patient’s restroom needs – some hospitals have special staffs providing restroom needs . And the level of help required will depend on the patient’s situation, some will merely need to be walked to a restroom, others may require aid with emptying a catheter, and there may even be patients that are bed ridden and require more assistance. This type of task may be portrayed as the worst part of a nursing assistant’s job; but it is a very important aspect to fulfilling the nursing code of ethics, as such responsibilities are the ones that ensure that patients are able to maintain their dignity in spite of their particular ailment.

However hardwork they perform, nurses, rather than physicians, have been the subject of blame in recent cases. Patients complain that nurses failed to meet the standard of care. They fail to set up a patient’s food and nutritional supplements. Patients complain that nurses fail to monitor the patients at all time.

In some worst cases, nurses were blamed for causing malpractice, giving unsuitable medicine, giving injection based on false assumption – they even get sued for what they think the did not do.

On the contrary nurse believe that they have met the standard in taking care of their patients. Cost-cutting measures also have contributed in part to another problem: patient dissatisfaction with the health care system. Many patients complain that they are merely case numbers to be handled efficiently, without care and concern from staff members, including nurses. Cost-cutting combined with patient dissatisfaction has created a double bind for nurses. Although they need to spend more time with patients if they are to interact with them more fully, nurses actually have less time. In addition, many nurses are surprised that patients perceive they receive unsatisfactory care because the nurses believe they are providing care exactly the way they were taught in nursing programs that focused on caring for patients. (3) In fact, nursing care concentrates on objective, physical care concerned with assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. (4) Objective care also includes psychological support, which involves supporting behavior changes, teaching patients to live with their medical conditions, and connecting patients to support groups. (4) From a patient's perspective, however, caring entails an emotional, subjective interaction with nurses in which nurses display genuine care and concern for them, not just as patients, but also as human beings. (5-7) Taking care of patients is an objective process centered around patients' medical-surgical need s, including psychological support, whereas caring for patients is a subjective process centered on nurses' humanness. These two different care approaches often are blurred, and when they are misunderstood, problems arise.

From the patient's perspective, the following actions indicated an uncaring nurse:
- Uncaring nurses' interactions with patients always were hurried, and these nurses never took time to talk to or really listen to patients.
- Uncaring nurses demonstrated a lack of interest in patients as people.
- The actions and behaviors of uncaring nurses were rule-bound and super-efficient; these nurses appeared tense, and they avoided eye contact with patients.
- Uncaring nurses' interactions with patients were perceived as scolding.
- Uncaring nurses were physically absent for long periods of time, or they made only short, superficial appearances.
In some cases what the patients complain about is true. Some nurses do not follow the traditional role of working in a hospital setting in documenting what and how much they eat and their level of fluid intake is another responsibility of a nursing assistant. they failed keep track of what their patients can eat, and what they are allowed to have. For example, when a patient is receiving surgery the doctor will say that they are not allowed to have any food or fluids after a certain time. Unfortunately, the people who prepare meals may have sent a meal to the patient, because they were unaware of the doctor’s orders. Nursing assistants do not step in and verify this and other information such as the types of food a patient may be allergic to, or unable to eat due to digestive concerns.
Some of them even ineffectively give a patient their medicine and ensuring that he or she actually takes it correctly is also a duty of a nursing assistant which are expected that they may be looked upon to double check the accuracy of orders or to inform physicians and/or nurses of any medication or substances that a patient may have already taken that could affect their treatment.

Whatever happens in hospital, nurses actually have, long understood the responsibility required of them in their practice. During the process of formal education, students are continuously reminded of their professional responsibilities. Nurses are, however, not always as knowledgeable of the view of those outside of the nursing profession regarding their responsibilities.

But what cause them in the situation where they are. Some experts state that they can’t maintain good standards because they are overloaded , the profession of nursing as a whole is overloaded because there is a nursing shortage. They are overloaded by the number of patients they oversee. They are overloaded by the number of tasks they perform. They work under cognitive overload, engaging in multitasking and encountering frequent interruptions. They work under perceptual overload due to medical devices that do not meet perceptual requirements insufficient lighting, illegible handwriting, and poor labeling designs. They work under physical overload due to long work hours and patient handling demands which leads to a high incidence of MSDs. In short, the nursing work system often exceeds the limits and capabilities of human performance. These overloads can limit capabilities of performance.
The board set a precedent that it was each nurse's job to double check the physician's orders and evaluate the situation to make sure that nothing violated hospital policy and that nothing was outside the normal standard of care all of which to ensure quality care for all, to maintain their credentials, code of ethics, standards, and competencies.

As a conclusion, what patients view as a good caring of a nurse is a nurse's physical presence. They feel good if nurses are coming checking them up. They feel welcomed when nurses speak to them in good tone of voice. They feel safe when nurses try to give an answer to whatever questions they ask, even if they say they will ask the doctor. And it was considered caring if the nurse made direct patient eye contact and disclosed personal information.

Finally, patients are hoping for skillful and caring nurse with a kind face who has an empathetic nature to be available in many hospital.