Public Perception of Nursing / Healthcare - Research Paper Example

This essay is meant to illustrate certain aspects of the perceptions about nursing and health care in general with clear evaluation of various constructive mechanisms applied in the prospect of the nursing profession. Major Nursing Issue – Public Perception Almost every profession related to healthcare industry involves a lot of risk as they are directly interactive with human lives. Despite the continuous efforts of the organizational management to find the required potential from the staff, the fact is that the nursing professionals are scarce against the numbers needed for regulating the healthy index of patient-nurse ratio in the present world for many conceptual reasons.

According to the finding s of Turner (2007), the biased perception of the public about the nursing professionals as a group of sexually attractive women with limited knowledge in their subject creates a negative inspiration among the nurses themselves (p.184). The major issues facing nursing in the modern world may be a complex result of the technical failures of the nursing education. Although nursing is a reputed profession, there are no entry level requirements suggested for the nursing admissions in various colleges unlike most other professional courses.

This characteristic of the nursing education system is a potential contributor to the public perception that most nurses suffer qualification challenges. Moreover, the inferior levels of practical and theoretical knowledge among some nurses are reflected during their clinical assistance which denies them the public recognition of their professional identity. According to the suggestions of Burnard, Chapman & Smallman (2004, p. 4) the recognition among the public is the fundamental element that guides the growth of an individual to a professional.

Quality education and proper industrial training are the inevitable features of any profession. A general perception of a large number of people like Wallace (2007, p. 17), nursing is predominantly a female’s job with stereotypical applications where nurses are not required to enhance their knowledge and skills, who eventually become less educated and less autonomous in their profession. This conception can create a negative impact on the dignity of the profession in general; however, the fact is that the modern nursing schools are well equipped with highly qualified trainers to explore the technological as well as ethical elements involved in this profession.

Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning The influence of public perception about nursing professionals is directly experienced in the multi-faceted organizational cycle of the health care industry. A majority of hospital cases need to be addressed with the perfect levels of correlation between needs and resources and their legal and ethical implications. As a counter-effect to the misconceptions of the public about the largely believed knowledge deficiency, the modern nursing academics have consolidated the literature of legally and ethically important aspects for learners.

Nurses are, therefore, supposed to maintain a personality with acute care for the patients needs and to possess knowledge about the legal formalities of treatment and medication of the patient. According to Rosdahl and Kowalski (2007, p. 33), negligence is a significant legal and ethical failure of a nurse’s professionalism which can be related to the educational level and the