Case Assignment: Professional Standards

Case Assignment: Professional Standards

Case Assignment: Professional Standards

Module 01 Discussion – Why Nursing Standards of Practice After reviewing the Nursing Standards of Practice, describe three reasons why these are important to nursing practice, safety, and achieving good client outcomes. Please make your initial post by midweek, and respond to at least two other student’s post by the end of the week. Please check the Course Calendar for specific due dates.

Professional standards describe the competent level of care in each phase of the nursing process. They reflect a desired and achievable level of performance against which a nurse’s actual performance can be compared. The main purpose of professional standards is to direct and maintain safe and clinically competent nursing practice.

These standards are important to our profession because they promote and guide our clinical practice. They provide an evaluation tool for yourself and your colleagues to ensure clinical proficiency and safety. Professional nursing standards are also used to provide a framework for developing clinical competency checklists or proficiency evaluations for a specific clinical unit or employer. And they may be used as a comparison tool to evaluate a nurse’s care if the employer suspects the nurse has developed unsafe work habits or isn’t adhering to established organizational policies or widely accepted guidelines established by state and federal laws or leading healthcare organizations.

Professional standards assist us, our management team, and our healthcare organization to develop safe staffing practices, delegate tasks to licensed and unlicensed personnel, ensure adequate documentation, and even create policies for new technology such as social media. For example, if a nurse discloses on a social media site that he or she is providing care to a specific patient, it potentially violates the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Violating a professional standard can expose you and your healthcare organization to liability and potential loss of licensure.