Professional Role Socialization
Order Instructions:
Read the following and then compose your paper:
Chapter 4: Role Transition (Reprinted with permission from: Lora Claywell (2009) LPN to RN Transitions 2nd ed.) St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.)
Ellis & Hartley (10th ed), Nursing in Today’s World. Chapter 1, pp. 26-28, Characteristics of a Profession.
The paper consists of five (5) parts and must be submitted by the close of week six.
Part I: Define professional socialization. Using the criteria for a profession described in the assigned readings, discuss three (3) criteria of the nursing profession which support professional socialization.
Part II: Refer to the Four Stages of Role Transition listed at the end of the Module Notes for this module. Read and summarize each stage. Then, identify the one stage which you are currently experiencing and support your decision.
Part III: Identify two barriers which may interfere with accomplishing Claywell’s FOURTH stage of role transition. For each barrier, describe two (2) resources to overcome each one. (total of 4 resources).
Part IV: Claywell (2009) discusses 8 areas of differences between the LPN and RN roles: Assessment skills, Patient teaching skills; Communication skills; Educational preparation; Intravenous Therapy; Legal responsibilities; Nursing care planning; Thinking skills. Choose three (3) differences and provide supporting evidence how the differences you selected are implemented AND why they are such an integral part of the RN role.
Part V: Conclusion. Describe your plan for socialization into the role of the professional nurse.
Compose your work using a word processor (or other software as appropriate) and save it frequently to your computer. Use a 12 font size, double space your work and use APA format for citations, references, and overall format
SAMPLE ANSWER
Professional Role Socialization Paper
Professional socialization is the whereby an individual acquire knowledge, skills, and values that are key for one to start a successful career which requires advanced skills and knowledge. It has a great influence on one’s professional development, it is therefore important to understand socialization because it enables one to be able to strategize on the kind of recruitment to carry out (Masters, 2014). Professional socialization is influenced by several factors while the student is still in school and when in their working environment trying to develop their careers. Definition of professional socialization is mostly derived from the learning norms, attitudes, behaviors, skills, roles and values of a particular profession. For an individual to become socialized in a profession, he/she has to become conversant with values and norms of that profession by changing his/her behavior and personality (Lai, & Pek, 2012).
The nursing profession is never that easy, actually its part of socialization whereby an individual has to internalize and develop so as to build professional identity. Nursing involves dealing with patients who are not easy to handle, and this is quite challenging because they have to find ways on how to handle them no matter what. Some studies have shown that in nursing, sense of belonging, and professional identity contributes to professional socialization. For a nurse to develop in his/her career it involves a sense of becoming, personal commitment and internalization of values. For one to gain professional identity one should be able to view him/herself as a nurse and be able to perform job responsibilities skillfully. Nursing socialization is whereby the nurse as an individual is able to have a sense of belonging, and be knowledgeable (Zarshenas, Sharif, Molazem, Khayyer, Zare, & Ebadi, 2014).
Also, it is necessary that the nurse acquires the necessary values for the position change his/her behavior and attitudes which are important to achieve the professional role. The period taken by the students to study nursing is quite long and greatly interferes with their values, norms and behaviors. Socialization is very important in the medical field because nurses, doctors and all other parties in the medical field have to be able to develop, their norms, behaviors and values in line with their profession. For nurses to be able to perform their duties professionally, they have to develop a sense of belonging to that career. By developing a sense of belonging they will be able to accept their career as nurses, this means that one is able to respect his/her profession as a nurse, which makes them to be able to commit, and improve on the career and on themselves (Zarshenas, Sharif, Molazem, Khayyer, Zare, & Ebadi, 2014).
Transition is when an individual passes from one stage to another. The movements are considered to have great impact on the person’s life and other people close to them. They greatly affect their wellbeing and their health. The first stage in role transition is transition shock. This is the stage whereby new nursing students graduate and are registered as nurses. When starting career one is filled with anxiety, how to behave professionally and get used to practice and practical application of class work. This greatly impacts the new graduate’s life and those close to the student in different ways. This is because the graduate has to first get acquainted with what happens in his/her profession, adapt to work environment and forget about class environment which causes a lot of shock to them and takes time for them to stabilize and perform their duties well (Duchscher, 2009). Transition stages enable employers to be able to understand their new employees better. The four stages of role transition include:
- Doing
In this stage, students are not completely prepared for the new environment and the new responsibilities. The new employees are filled with anxiety and expectations about the new roles. They are faced with challenges of understanding what is expected of them and meeting their required tasks on time. In this stage graduates feel stressed because they are not quite familiar with the practical environment and also they don’t want to be seen as incompetent. Due to these pressures of the new job, new environment you find that the new nurse personality is changing so as to adopt to the changing norms, values and behaviors of the new profession. In this stage the new employee is not able to perform many tasks compared to the other employees. Therefore, it is the duty of the new graduate to work hard to try and balance his values, behaviors, and norms with those of his/her new profession (Duchscher, 2009).
- Being
This stage is after 4 to 5 months of working in the nursing profession. In this stage their thinking, knowledge level and skills improves compared to the first stage. The new nurses start criticizing the practice and the in competences of the health care systems. The shock that these new graduates had is already gone and they are able to handle tasks more professionally compared to the initial stage. Though these new nurses have not absorbed their new responsibility completely a great change is seen I n them. In this stage they are able to be given leadership positions and they are able to offer better medical services in a better way (Duchscher, 2009).
- Knowing
The new graduates have achieved separateness which differentiates them from the other medical practitioners. In addition, they are able to re unite with the community as professionals. In this stage, some of the new nurses are still recovering while others have completely recovered from the shocks and anxieties of joining the profession. In this, stage Relationships between the nursing graduates and other medical practitioner’s advances to different levels. In addition, their values, norms and behavior change to conform to the nursing profession values, norms and behavior. Their confidence and comfort improves to a higher level and they are able to interact freely with the other employees in the organization (Duchscher, 2009).
- Mastery
In this stage the new nurse is now aware of what he/she is required to do and is more confident in his/her job. Though not easy to master everything in the nursing field because it keeps advancing and changing every now and then the new nurses have a lot of knowledge about their career. Accomplishing this final stage in role transition is faced with several challenges such as, the new researches being carried about medicine which make them to have to keep on gaining more and more knowledge about the career every now and then. In addition, the emerging sicknesses which are not easy to handle make it hard for the nurses to be able to achieve this stage completely.
Dealing with patients is not that easy this is because, patients come from different cultures and the pain that comes with sickness makes them hard to handle. To overcome some of the challenges in this stage, the nurse should ensure that: he/she is updated with all the information about the new trends in the medical field and how to handle them. In addition, one should ensure that his relationship with the other medical practitioners is good so that they can be able to share their experiences in the field and how they have been able to deal with their challenges. In addition, one can also decide to go back to school to gain more knowledge and skills in the field. Finally, one can join nursing association so as to be able to be able to interact with nurses all over the country and share ideas and gain new ideas about nursing.
The stage which am currently experiencing in my nursing career is the being stage.
This is because am now able to do my job well and meet deadline, am also able to handle a large number of clients and I have improved on my service delivery. Also, the other day I was given the responsibility of heading the prenatal unit. I also feel more confident compared to when I was new in the organization.
RN and LPN roles are very important in the medical environment and should be clearly defined so as to avoid confusion and conflicts in the hospital. RN roles are about directing LPN functions. LPN’S is concerned with providing direct medical care to patients, operate as members of the healthcare team, evaluates the nursing care, and implementing of care plan under RN’S instructions( Greenwood, 2015). It is therefore very important for an organization to ensure that these roles are clearly stated and there is teamwork between RN’S and LPN’S to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the hospitals. Also, the relationship between the RN’S and LPN’S should be good so that there are no conflicts between the two groups because conflicts lead to poor delivery of services and this is not good for the healthcare organization and the patients too. Role clarification is very important in the nursing field (Shaffer, Johnson, & Guinn, 2010).
Communication is very important in all professions. In the nursing profession to avoid conflicts RN’S and LPN’S it is very important that communication is ensured between the medical practitioners. Poor communication skills in the nursing environment can lead to inefficiency of services to the patients. The reason for choosing communication skills is because, if there is poor communication between registered nurses and licensed nurses in the hospital, probability of attending to the patients effectively is low. The licensed nurses will also not be able to gain more knowledge in the field. Also proper instructions need to be given to licensed nurse by registered nurse for them to carry out their job and with poor communication cannot be possible. Finally to make work easier for both groups communication is paramount.
The other differences are legal responsibilities and thinking skills (Stream companies, 2015).
The registered nurses have more legal responsibilities compared licensed nurses this makes them more responsible for the services given to patients by the licensed nurses. An RN should have better thinking skills because they enable him/her to be able to know how to deal certain situations in the medical environment. The three differences are implemented by ensuring that the nurse’s roles are clear to them and they have the necessary qualifications to do their defined roles. They are very critical to RN’S roles because if they lack the three there will difficult in service deliver by the LPN’S. Also, a registered nurse is expected to be more knowledgeable compared to the licensed nurse because of his/her experience in the field.
Socialization in the nursing profession is very important because one has to integrate his personal values, norms and behaviors with those of nursing so that he/she can be able to gain career development and identity. Also, it enables a nurse to be able to love his/her job and feel motivated and be able to deliver the best services to the patients. My socialization plan into the role of nursing profession will involve the following steps: I will first accept the responsibilities that come with the nursing profession and find ways to adapt to the new changes in my life. Secondly, I will seek advice from other experienced nurses on how they handled their first times in the profession and ask them to help me through the stages. Thirdly, I will ensure that I don’t take I have a role model in the nursing profession. Finally, I would ensure positive attitude towards my job and set goals to achieve so that in future I will be able to measure my progress in the career. To improve my services I will ask my workmates to be rating monthly. Also, if am not following my career goals I would also ask them to remind me and help me achieve them.
References
Duchscher J. E.B. (2009). Transition shock: the initial stage of role adaptation for newly graduated registered nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 65(5), 1103-1113.
Duchscher. J. B, (2009). A process of becoming: The Stages of New Nursing Graduate Professional Role Transition, the Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing. 39(10), 441-447
Greenwood. B. (2015). RN duties VS LPN duties. Retrieved, March 25/2015, from: Work. Chrone.com/ rn- duties-vs-lpn-duties-9254.html.
Lai, P. K., & Pek, H. L. (2012). Concept of professional socialization in nursing. Int EJ of Sci Med Edu, 6(1), 31-5.
Masters, K. (2014). Role development in professional nursing practice. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Shaffer. L.M, Johnson.K, & Guinn. C, (2010). Remedying role confusion: Differentiating RN and LPN roles, American nurse today. 5 (3).
Stream companies, (2015).what are the differences between a RN and a LPN. Retrieved march25/2015, from: www.pit.edu/blog/2015…/what-is-the-difference-between-a-rn-and -lpn/
Zarshenas.L, Sharif. F, Molazem. Z, Khayyer. M, Zare. N, & Ebadi.A. (2014). Professional Socialization in Nursing: A qualitative content analysis, Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research. 19(4): 432-438.
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