The relevance of nurses and midwives code of conduct in Australia.

AIM: This study explores Australian clinical nurses' and midwives' familiarity with a new code of conduct and understanding in what ways the code is important for nurses as they carry out clinical practice. BACKGROUND: Codes specify the expectations of nurses' responsibilities, legal requirements, behaviour and conduct. Being familiar with the code is central to being a professional nurse or midwife. As nursing continues to advance, updating the code is crucial to maintain professional and safe practice. DESIGN: This project utilized a cross-sectional descriptive design. METHODS: A survey was developed incorporating Likert-type scale assessments of the 7 value statements from the 2018 Australian Nurses' Code of Conduct for familiarity and importance. The survey included open-ended questions to elicit clinical nurses' experiences of conduct breaches, opinions regarding usefulness and relevance of the code for current practice. Data were collected at an acute care hospital in Sydney during January 2018. RESULTS: Significant differences relating to cultural and patient-centred approaches were revealed in the study. The new value involving the role of research was least understood and ranked least important by nurses and midwives. Professional 'integrity' resonated with participants when considering the behaviour of nurses, and short, unambiguous values were the most popular. Additionally, a substantial number of participants had no knowledge of the code or were not aware of the recently revised version. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING: A code of conduct provides structure and guidance for workplace values and principles. A respected code is important to the nursing profession to help prevent inappropriate and incompetent behaviour and as a guide for nursing performance. Nurses in this study claimed the code was highly relevant to their work as a nurse and was incorporated into their daily practice.

A montage of the qualities of the registered nurse.

AIM: This study aimed to gain undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of the essential qualities of the professional nurse. BACKGROUND: An essential component of undergraduate nursing programmes is to educate the student to become qualified as a professional/registered nurse. These characteristics will determine curricula and students' perceptions. No qualitative studies of the essential qualities of nurses are evident in recent literature. METHODS: A descriptive survey method was used to gather participants' perceptions of the qualities of a registered nurse over each year of their bachelor of nursing course at the largest programme in Australia. FINDINGS: Six concepts occurred most frequently in the students' responses. Caring was the most common followed by knowledge/understanding, empathy, work, communication and skills. DISCUSSION: A montage was developed with an interlacing of the qualities rather than any one concept predominating any year. Each quality was seen as essential and used to varying degrees as the nurse becomes a professional. These qualities form part of the education of nurses and have implications for nursing and/or health policy. This study has implications in the development of nursing curricula, which should include both the science and art of nursing with an emphasis on technical and communication skills. CONCLUSION: This study has shown that students in Australia hold similar perceptions to their contemporaries in other international western countries. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING AND HEALTH POLICY: Caring is emphasized as a critical component of nursing delivery; however, opportunities must be presented to students to integrate skills such as caring, knowledge/understanding, empathy and communication.

Professional identity and nursing: contemporary theoretical developments and future research challenges.

AIM: We propose that the conceptual orientation of professional identity is a logical consequence of self-concept development by focusing on career and its meaning and presents a measurable set of concepts that can be manipulated to improve retention of student and registered nurses within health service. BACKGROUND: Although professional identity is a term that is commonly written of in nursing literature, its theoretical origins remain unclear, and available empirical evidence of its presence or ability to change is omitted from nursing research. SOURCES OF EVIDENCE: We present a professional identity pathway and explore the factors that influence professional identity throughout a career in nursing. DISCUSSION: Nurses' professional identities develop throughout their lifetimes, from before entering nursing education, throughout their years of study and clinical experience, and continue to evolve during their careers. Education is, however, a key period as it is during this time students gain the knowledge and skills that separate nurses as professional healthcare workers from lay people. CONCLUSION: Finally, a call for longitudinal studies of students to graduates, using conceptually derived and psychometrically proven instruments capable of detecting the subtle changes in the construct over time, is recommended. Further empirical research into the theoretical concepts that underline professional identity, and the factors that influence changes in this important construct in nursing, is required. Ultimately, the practical relevance of such research will lie in the potential it provides for enhanced nursing career support and improved workforce policies.

Many paths lead to nursing: factors influencing students' perceptions of nursing.

BACKGROUND: A diverse group of students is being recruited to nursing programmes worldwide, although little research has identified the effect of this diversity. Contemporary knowledge of the qualities of nurses and how they vary with demographic and other factors may assist in the retention of nursing students. AIM: The aim of this study is to explore student nurses' perceptions of the qualities of nurses and how these differ with age, country of birth, gender, healthcare experience and mode of entry to the nursing programme. METHODS: Using a descriptive comparative design, 676 nursing students in their first week of a Bachelor of Nursing programme participated (77% response). Participants completed a survey noting demographic data such as age, gender, healthcare experience, country of birth, nursing programme entry method and attributes of nurses from the valid and reliable Qualities of Nursing Scale (QoN). RESULTS: Overall, the students confirmed their agreement with the 12 items of the QoN and rated good listening skills as the most important quality for a nurse rather than Caring or Helping. Male participants and participants born overseas demonstrated the lowest mean scores on most qualities, suggesting less agreement with the qualities. DISCUSSION: The recruitment of students to university needs to continue to support disparate entry pathways. Students with more life experience (older students) or health experience may be more likely to complete nursing courses and to be retained within health services. Qualities of nurses may be changing to reflect modern perceptions of nurses with a shift away from the focus on caring.

Measuring nurses' self-concept.

Little is known of nurses' self-concept in light of their professional identity or as working adults. This article explores the development and rigorous testing of a new self-concept instrument designed specifically for nurses. The new measure is based on the self-concept measurement theory of Shavelson, Hubner, and Stanton. An expert panel was used to critique and aid refinement of the measure. The dimensions of nurses' self-concept were measured in six scales: General Nursing, Care, Staff Relations, Communication, Knowledge, and Leadership. Two groups participated in this study: Group 1 consisted of nursing students prior to graduation (n = 506) and Group 2 consisted of randomly selected, experienced, working nurses (n = 528). A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to test the fit of a priori models. The results indicate that all scales possess good construct validity and a satisfactory fit with the data.