Abstract
Introduction
Nursing practice recognizes altruism through various interventions such as understanding different beliefs and cultures, advocating for vulnerable patients, taking risks on behalf of other workers and patients and mentoring other professionals. In altruism, interpersonal factors such as respect and compassion are considered virtues that cultivate a caring attitude towards others. As such, some people feel that altruism usually places heavy demands on the nurses’ self-sacrifice, thus overlooking the challenges that these nurses face while in practice especially with acute-care settings and psychiatric situations. In this regard, it means that master’s prepared nurses have a role to play in ensuring that the right interventions are put in place to ensure that nurses are able to smoothly and willingly cultivate the culture of altruism even when the circumstances are difficult.
Target Population
A master’s prepared nurse should focus on strategizing on how innovative interventions on altruism should be implemented in a healthcare set-up. The target population would be new graduate nurses since nurses should learn about the professional culture of care from the beginning of their career so as to practice it throughout their career. Most student nurses start their nursing course just as a career choice without much of a thought as to what it entails in regards to self-less care (Abrahamsen, 2015). Indeed, this is the reason when student nurse has graduated and posted to their first institution of practice, they need to be taught and trained on how the issue of altruism should be handled and implemented by each individual. Some nurses confess that when they are beginning their careers as nurses, they actually do not understand what difference they will make in the world by working as a nurse later in life (Abrahamsen, 2015). Some actually have no passion or calling to help people in need. They may have chosen to nurse as a career due to the stable nature of the career, decent pay, security of the job or ability to attain the educational requirements. Certainly, these graduate nurses require guidance and mentorship to ensure that they are trained about the professional culture of caring in the nursing practice (Eley, Eley, Bertello, & Rogers-Clark, 2012). The most appropriate person to handle this issue is a master’s prepared nurse who has a deeper understanding of the importance and effectiveness of practicing altruism in the care sector. The new graduate nurses should learn about how to show care, concern, and respect to patients, other nurses and healthcare providers at the individual level. Eventually, the entire healthcare set-up will create and maintain a culture of altruism.
Purpose of the Paper
In the nursing practice, altruism is a pivotal role for all nurses to ensure that they practice self-less care towards other nurses, their patients, and other healthcare providers, and this should be implemented by master’s prepared nurses who ought to devise innovative interventions that are effective and efficient. Through this process, master’s prepared nurses will demonstrate leadership through the development of such interventions for a target population that consists of new graduate nurses. The interventions devised must be effective in nature and should be able to facilitate inter-professional collaboration. The interventions should, therefore, be developed with the well-being of the nurse in mind to ensure that nurses feel motivated enough to practice altruism within a healthcare facility.
Scope of the Issue
According to Kristoffersen and Friberg, (2015), there have been numerous inquiries and reviews that have been made to find out why there have been many healthcare failings over the years and the relation that exists between these failures and nurses in question. It is universally agreed that the care culture of a healthcare organization has a direct impact on both the caring and the cared-for (For example, nurses, and patients). Most organizations have tried to come up with strategies that can increase the rating levels for their organizations when it comes to caring for the patients. However, there are many instances that patients have complained about the nurses and the nurses about the patients. In some cases, patients have felt disrespected and humiliated as they have constantly complained of not being listened to, failure to be provided with sufficient information and lack of total involvement when nurses are making decisions. A study done in Belgium proved that indeed nurses were not really connected with patients at the individual level and that most of the nurses prioritized technical and medical interventions without establishing altruism relationships with their patients (Prevost & Krau, 2014). This made patients feel ignored and left out and their quality of care seemed to deteriorate. However, most of these nurses admitted that it was difficult to establish and maintain constant relationships with patients since they were working in overwhelming and complex work environments. In other instances, it was difficult for the nurses to establish the said relationships because they were dealing with psychiatric cases or terminally ill patients who were in constant distress and were difficult to handle. In this regard, it is clear that the issue of lack of altruism and care is very prevalent and there is need to take action through the implementation of innovative strategies.
Key Concepts
There are three main concepts that are related to the issue of the professional culture of caring through altruism. These concepts include communication between the nurses and the patients, understanding the culture of the patients and nurses and motivation of the nurses by the management.
Communication training
Understanding one another originates from effective communication between two persons. The effectiveness of communication depends on many factors such as listening, language and non-verbal communication (Kristoffersen & Friberg, 2015). A nurse needs to understand these factors in order to effectively communicate with patients and colleagues while at work.
Cultural Understanding
In order to effectively care for one another, each person should find out and try to understand the diverse cultures of the people he or she is dealing with in a healthcare set- up (Kristoffersen & Friberg, 2015). For instance, patients who are Muslim may not understand care the same way Christians will. As such, it is the work of the nurses to ensure that they understand how altruism is implemented depending on the culture of the person in question.
Motivation in Nursing
This is a key concept in this issue since nurses also have challenges when it comes to showing commitment and love for what they do if they are not motivated (Gomes & Proença, 2015). The motivation for the nurses should involve appreciating the work they do when caring for patients and the sacrifices they make to improve other people’s lives.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical frameworks that will help drive the interventions chosen include constant training and motivation of nurses. New nurses entering the job market ought to be trained on how well they can adapt the principle of altruism when dealing with patients as new graduates and throughout their career life (Kristoffersen & Friberg. Such training will give them a good basis for understanding the importance of a professional caring culture that should be cultivated earliest possible during a nurse’s career life. The nurses will understand the importance of altruism and how it helps deliver quality care and keeps effective communication amongst all people involved in a healthcare set- up. Furthermore, the theoretical set- up should involve how nurses should be motivated enough to ensure they create time to establish great relationships with patients and other colleagues. Lack of motivation brings on a dull mood that highly affects work in an extremely negative manner (Gomes & Proença, 2015). Through the above understanding of the theoretical framework, nurses will find it easy to accept and implement the innovative interventions provided by a healthcare management.
Innovative Interventions
Patient education
Patient education is an innovative strategy that can enhance altruism within a healthcare set- up. Nurses should be taught on how they can train patients in regards to what the patients can do as part of self-care management. Research shows that various healthcare disorders such as diabetes can be effectively managed through patient education (Prevost & Krau, 2014). Therefore, a master’s prepared student should emphasize on teaching every new graduate nurse on how she or he can train the patients being handled within a healthcare institution. Self-management education interventions have been noted to be effective across different cultures, age, and diseases. This intervention will improve the professional cultural care provided by a healthcare team or facility in a very big way. Both the patients and the nurses will greatly benefit from such an intervention. The nurses will actually allocate time when they are able to train the patients under their care, thereby establishing relationships with them. The nurses will have learned about communication strategies that lead to the effective passing of information and how to listen to the patients during such training. The new graduate nurse will feel honored and valued when given the responsibility to train patients in a healthcare facility. It will motivate the nurse to talk to the patient, listen attentively to the advice and also create a lasting relationship with the patients through culturally competent care. A study done in 2013 showed that patients who received a patient education that was meant to guide them on how to self-care and manage their conditions were likely to recover faster and had a better quality of life than those who did not receive any self-care training (Prevost & Krau, 2014). Indeed, this kind of intervention seems to give both the patient and the nurse self- empowerment and re-assurance that they can do something better to ensure that culturally competent care is effective.
Motivation
Gomes and Proença, (2015) observe that the main issue that hinders altruism practice in the healthcare field is the fact that nurses feel overwhelmed by work within the complex healthcare facilities that require them to mostly concentrate on medical and technical support other than creating time and relationships with various patients. In the long run, this leads to over-work and burn-out thus causing frustrations and distance are created between a nurse and his patients or colleagues. This can be solved through the motivation intervention that should focus on making the workplace conducive for the nurse to feel always motivated. Motivation can be implemented through rewards for work well done, awards for exemplary performance, recognition, bonuses, promotions and constant training (Gomes & Proença, 2015). A motivated nurse always looks forward to his day at work with joy, happiness, and commitment. It is easy to work with such a nurse since he will be motivated to always do the right thing at all times and will most likely endeavor to give self-less care to patients and his colleagues. The hardships that nurses find in delivering ethical conduct are linked directly to the difficult environment that they work in. The statement explains that if nurses are less motivated, they can hardly feel the need to selflessly show altruism to patients and others in the healthcare community. Fotiadou, Malliarou, Zetta, Gouva, and Kotrotsiou, (2015), further asserts that nurses appear to be in a tension between external patients’ demands and internal expectations or ideals of caring. In order to strike a deal between the two, nurses need to first be motivated enough and they should not be overworked while being expected to deliver professional cultural care. Hem, Halvorsen, and Nortvedt, (2014), talk about mature care as the care provided in the light of altruistic caring together with ensuring that good clinical judgment is maintained. In such a case, the nurses still need to be motivated in order to work with good judgment and also show altruistic care to patients and colleagues.
Assessing Effectiveness
Metrics for assessing effectiveness
There are several improvement metrics that can be used to assess the effectiveness of the innovative interventions discussed. Patient education can be assessed by measuring the improvement levels of patient’s quality of life. Patients, such as diabetic patients, require thorough patient education that teaches them how to measure their sugar levels, how to take care of their feet and how to eat the right diet at all times (Prevost & Krau, 2014). After teaching them with care and concern, the patients that take such training seriously have an improved quality of life, fewer trips to the hospital and they seem generally happy. This situation replicates within other diseases. Such improvements can be used to measure the effectiveness of the intervention given by a nurse. The metrics used to assess the effectiveness of motivation among the nurses would be the level of burnout, frustration, and unhappiness among the nurses and also the rate of employee retention in the healthcare organization involved. If the burn-out and frustrations are low, it means that the employees are happy to be working comfortably in the organization. Also, if few employees are leaving an organization over the years, it means that the organization is keeping the workers motivated enough to stay in the organization (Dotson, Dave, Cazier, & Spaulding, 2014). All these are clear metrics that can guide a master’s prepared nurse to know if the workers under him are well connected with culturally competent care through altruistic practices.
Interventions and Inter-professional Collaboration
The above interventions may actually facilitate inter-professional collaboration between nurses and other healthcare professionals. For instance, if a nurse trains a patient on self-care management in an altruistic manner, the patient will definitely remember what he was taught and will practice it to the letter. Various other professionals such as nutritionists, pediatrics, and all medics will collaborate with the nurses to provide holistic care through altruistic approach (Dotson et al., 2014). The nurse will gather as much information as possible from the professionals and pass it on to the patients in a caring, concerned manner. Also, motivation will lead to a culture of excellence in the hospital and every professional in the organization will be trying their best to remain the best so as to stay in the organization longer. As such, most people will be able to know one another and understand one another regardless of the profession.
Dissemination of the results
The results of the above activities need to be distributed and made known by the hospital community. This should be done in a manner that the information will reach every nurse in the organization in order to let them understand the importance of showing care to one another and to the patients. For instance, if patient education proves to be effective, the information can be passed on through internal newsletters and emails, congratulating those involved and pointing out improvement areas. This will further increase and enhance the motivation already cultivated in the organization.
Leadership demonstration
The above activity highly demonstrates leadership in nursing practice. Leadership is seen first in the ability to work with a target population of new graduate nurses. Managing a group of members shows that one has leadership abilities. Furthermore, the leader is able to assess the prevalence of the issue of lack of altruism in the nursing practice and come up with clear innovative interventions that are likely to improve the professional cultural care in a healthcare set-up. A leader is supposed to realize gaps within an issue and innovatively come up with strategies or interventions that can effectively tackle the problem at hand (Praszkier, 2015). Therefore, the activity does demonstrate leadership of master’s prepared nurses when they are dealing with nursing teams.
Conclusion
Indeed, in the nursing practice, altruism is a pivotal role for all nurses to ensure that they practice self-less care towards other nurses, their patients, and other healthcare providers, and this should be implemented by master’s prepared nurses who ought to devise innovative interventions that are effective and efficient. Based on the above discussion, nurses may become too overwhelmed to use altruistic approach when dealing with others. Therefore, the best leadership in a healthcare organization should empower new and continuing nurses through teaching them about patient education and motivate them constantly. This way, patients will stop complaining that they are not listened to and that the nurses do ignore them. Eventually, the altruistic approach will ensure that patients’ quality of life is highly improved and it will also facilitate inter-professional collaboration between nurses and other people.
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