Professional Identity In Nursing Essay

Understanding Professional Identity In Nursing Professional identity—What is it? Is it even important? In short, professional identity is extremely important in nursing as well as in every career. It is important in every aspect of a nurse's role even when not on the floor. In this paper, we will take a deeper look at what professional identity entails and its importance in nursing specifically.

Professional Identity Professional identity is how one acts, thinks, and feels about the standards of their profession. This differs from professionalism because professionalism is how everyone in the same profession is expected to act. Professional identity is not as easily controlled as each person’s own personality greatly impacts it. This means

A cross-sectional study done in China revealed that nursing students’ professional identities are greatly influenced by the environment in which they are in and cultural factors that led them to be a nurse. For example, the study states that a nursing student is more likely to have a positive professional identity if nursing was their first choice as a career. This is because they already have an interest. For those who nursing wasn’t their first choice, the article says that nursing instructors should make an effort to show those students how to change their professional identity for the better. (Zeng et al., 2022). This is just one part of the study that shows how important professional identity is—it is so important that instructors should be paying attention to their students and helping them develop positive professional identities before they go into the workforce. After taking the enneagram test to determine my personality type and thinking about how my personality type relates to my professional identity, I can see how there are environmental factors that are influencing my professional identity. I can see how my wanting to be a nurse from a young age has helped me think positively of the nursing career and build empathy for patients and want to help them. Some students may be

Being non-judgemental, seeing value in every person, seeing all points of view, being calm and empathetic, and desiring and working toward peace and resolution. Qualities like being non-judgemental and seeing all points of view are great characteristics of a nurse because it allows the patient to feel like they are just as important as everyone else and feel understood. Being calm and empathetic is a good quality to help keep conflict from happening and resolve it as peacefully as possible. Being calm is also good in high-risk situations because it will help a nurse keep a clear head and make better judgments and it will help the patient to feel more comfortable and safe in the situation. Overall, they are caring and provide a calming presence which is extremely important in nursing