The nursing profession
According to Wynd (2003), it is not enough to describe nursing as a profession without considering it as a calling. In addition to that, Wynd also discussed professionalism, years of experience, higher educational degrees in the field of nursing and specialization as important professional characteristics important to nursing. However, professionalism has assumed the highest significance, especially when nursing is considered as both a calling and a profession.
Professionalism is the quality of a nurse being competent in their practice. As a nurse, patient care is the core business. Without competence and knowledge, it may be challenging to ensure efficiency in service delivery. Remember, dealing with patients requires proficiency to ensure your safety first, to avoid the spread of diseases to other healthy people around and also enhance recovery for the patient. Without the required professionalism, therefore, all the three groups will be exposed to the risk of infection.
In addition to that, nursing is a profession that involves dealing with human life. Considering how sacred the life of human being is, it will not be a good idea to work unprofessionally to gain experience and become a good nurse. This will mean that some life must be threatened for one to gain experience. On the other hand, professionalism encourages gaining knowledge first so that experience shall follow. This way, the expertise and diligence will continue to grow, and at the same time, patients will be enjoying good care (Maclntosh, 2003). This places professionalism on a higher ground of importance as it is in the first step to achieving the others. Remember, nurses are expected to be relatively autonomous in delivering patient care and should, therefore, be vigilant In monitoring their levels of professionalism (Wynd, 3003)