As a Future Nurse

AS FUTURE NURSE… As a future nurse who is about to enter the nursing profession, to give quality of care to individuals whether sick or well with skills, knowledge and will, is our lifetime goal. But how? This is the challenge of everyone. The future of Nursing depends on how each and every member of the profession take up the challenges of the Filipinos and other world communities and respond to their needs. Intelligent and committed practice will make nursing gain rightful place in the world community and consequently thrive as a profession. As a nursing leader, you must develop ways in achieving these goals and to maintain the standards set for everyone practicing whether in the hospital setting or in education guided by Planning, Organizing, Controlling and Evaluation supported by different management styles and leadership. To achieve a goal, there are objectives to aid you to plan for the positive outcome, to organize resources, to control the achievement of results and to evaluate the conclusions, whether you are in the hospital setting or in education. In achieving objectives, it must be guided by principles and process. As a nursing leader, you must decide in advance what to do, how to do it, when to do it and who is to do it. This is what we called Planning. It is a cognitive process of decision making based on facts and information in order to arrive at a desired result. This is where budgeting—allocation of scarce resources and time management enter—setting goals and priority, eliminates time wastes and using of strategies. After planning, there is coordination of resources to accomplish objectives. This is the entrance of the so-called Organizing. This is where structures, relationships, classifications and time requirements took place. When organizing already in place, the use of formal authority to assure the achievements of goals and objectives positioned. This time, we are in Controlling —the means and the end. This is where quality assurance, techniques and discipline go into. Subsequent to all, determining how far objectives were accomplished is the last step. This is Evaluation. As a nursing leader, you must be participative, consultative and assertive. You must express opinions and beliefs without infringing on and refuses to be dominated or manipulated by others. To sum it all, whether you are in hospital setting or in education, you must be responsible, authoritative, and accountable to be able to achieve the lifetime goal. It is not merely focusing on what already established but by improving and establishing a more standards of excellence of interventions and taking steps to ensure that each patient receives the expected level of care and the best possible care available. With these principles, we, the Filipino nurses will be able to compete with the world communities and respond to their needs