Caring In The Nursing Profession

There is much disparagement at present, that caring is not an attribute of the nursing profession in the twenty first century, though there are many writers that suggest that caring is still essential in nursing practice. Caring may be a challenging concept to describe but it can be summarised as the ability to deliver holistic care (Gustafsson et al, 2009). Caring has many characteristics, which include patience, honesty, sensitivity, dedication, skills, autonomy and trust. Many nursing theories and models have been developed around the concept of caring. The writer believes that caring is shared by all health care professionals, not just amongst nurses. Some argue that caring is an attribute in nursing, however others would debate against

It is argued that there is insufficient time spent on the theory of care and its necessity in the nursing curriculum. Currently, nurses are not prepared for the clinical aspects of caring (Beckett, 2013). Ma et al (2013) maintains that there is a distance between the clinical perceptions and students expectations of caring. This can be shown in the fact that student nurses may have the knowledge in caring but are not prepared for the clinical aspects, therefore they are unable to perform the care, as the realities of care are different than their expectations. Newly progressed nurses may have the academic knowledge of care, but when they are positioned in the medical setting, their predictions do not cover the actualities of the clinical involvements, so therefore they are incapable to care (Beckett, 2013). The outcome being a lack of care as a result of the scarcity of the practical knowledge of care. This is another reason that is debated for the statement that caring is not an attribute of nursing in the twenty first

It is argued that time is of the essence in nursing practice. Nurses are put under a lot of pressure on a daily basis. There is a view that nurses have very little time and are very busy that they forget to deliver care and empathy towards a patient to make the patient feel ‘cared about’ (Corbin, 2008). Additionally, nurses not only have to nurse their patients on a daily basis, but they have to accomplish other tasks, for example documenting, filling out paperwork and management, as well as performing certain goals needed to be achieved that day (Beckett, 2013). Pressure on nurses has increased dramatically due to the lack of funding which has led to clinical environments being under staffed and in effect each individual nurse is therefore carrying out the duties and pressures of two nurses (DeCola and Riggins, 2010). For these reasons, in the twenty first century hospital setting, nurses are not able to be caring. Therefore, nurses can be seen to be unmindful and uncaring due to the scarcity of time and the pressure of the enormous work