10 Skills for Success Every Nurse Must Possess

There are many dynamic professions around the world. Undoubtedly, everyone comes second to medical professionals. Their jobs are highly demanding and require complete dedication to producing successful results.

A vast majority of healthcare professionals are nurses. Nurses act as the backbone of the entire healthcare industry. They characterize the efforts needed to drive this sector properly.

They are knowledgeable, skilled, and honest with their work. According to a Gallop Survey, people ranked nurses as the most trustworthy professionals of all. It highlights the significance of their role in our society.

There are specific skills at the very bottom of the pyramid and a prerequisite for every nurse. They include multitasking, a minimum level of education, basic medical knowledge, motivation to work, and compliance to protocols.

The requirement of these skills goes without saying. However, other skillsets make some nurses more successful than others. If you are a nurse and looking forward to developing those skills, this article is noteworthy. Here we discuss eight of such skills that every nurse must possess to achieve success.

Critical Thinking

To connect all the dots, sometimes you must go out of the box. Successful nurses possess the ability to think critically and produce effective responses. These nurses make better decisions and have better problem-solving skills. The contemporary medical scenario has become increasingly complex.

To be very specific, for example, if you see that something is broken and you need to use sterilizer repair services, you shouldn’t wait for someone to tell you to do that. The best will be to tell the higher management as soon as possible.

Critical thinking is your only weapon to resolve the intricacies of a modern medical encounter. Therefore, almost every CCNE accredited online MSN programs accompany a critical problem-solving workshop. It encourages critical reasoning and motivates nurses to think beyond the orthodox limits.

Effective Communication 

Communication might encompass active listening, fluent speech, and positive body language in other professions. For a nurse, effective communication begins even before he/she speaks a single word. Nurses have to portray themselves as sympathetic.

They must understand the patient through all dimensions of human interactions. They have to exhibit practical emotional, cognitive, and social communication skills. Moreover, an additional area of written communication increases the significance of effective communication for nurses.

Acceptance of Technology

Every medical profession evolves rapidly, and the transformation is mainly due to technology. However, the rate at which medical technology has evolved over the last decade is simply implausible. Now we have apps that store the entire history of patients and can plan medication routines through AI.

We have online portals where patients can readily interact with medical professionals and track their hospital records. The entire patient monitoring system has become digital. The on-paper output has also changed. In short, technology has become an integral part of modern-day healthcare. Nurses can never be successful unless they learn the ropes to manage technology.

Updated Learning Curve

The US spends a whopping $42 billion on medical research annually. As per the National Library of Medicine, there are more than 27 million articles about biomedical literature available on Medline. Now you can only imagine how fast the world of medicine changes. Nurses should adopt lifelong learning and ensure a large appetite for knowledge to match the latest developments. It is of great importance for their success in fieldwork.

Contingency Planning

Every patient is different from the other. You might face patients with similar medical conditions but the way they interact and perceive their surroundings vary. Things can go out of hand within no time.

A nurse should never be overconfident about dealing with a patient if he/she has already dealt with a similar case before. Medical emergencies can arise in a seemingly stable situation too. Therefore, a successful nurse possesses the skills of contingency planning.

Team Work

Delivering proper healthcare is not possible without the coherent teamwork of different medical professionals. A satisfied patient is the product of an efficient collaboration of skilled medical staff. Since many healthcare facilities have multidimensional and culturally diverse medical staff, thus teamwork becomes essential.

Every team member might have different expertise and work orientations, but their goal is the same. Nurses perform the most pivotal role of synergizing the entire team. They behave as mediators and control the flow of information between different stakeholders of a medical engagement. Therefore, nurses must possess the right teamwork attitude.

Self-Awareness 

The first step of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. The other extreme at the higher level is relationship management. It means you can never manage others and maintain good relationships unless you are aware of yourself. In nursing, where it is all about understanding and managing the patients, the significance of self-awareness quadruples.

Increased self-awareness enhances self-management. Only then can a nurse optimize time, devise an effective routine schedule, maintain his/her health, and cope with workplace pressures. Moreover, resilience is typical of a successful nurse, and the road to developing it goes through augmented self-awareness.

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to be in someone else’s shoes and understand how they might be feeling. It helps to develop a reliable connection with others and nourish relationship management. We don’t suggest getting too involved with a patient but considering them more as humans than mere patients. A successful nurse goes all the way to provide the best healthcare he/she can. It is only possible when he/she feels a patient’s needs by heart. Empathy is the tool that can induce this aptitude in nurses.

Conclusion

A successful manager means a progressive team. A successful CEO means a profitable company. Simultaneously, successful nurses don’t just translate into a good hospital but a never-ending list of satisfied families attached to a patient. Their role is monumental in creating a peaceful society. Their importance to keep the society stable came more to everyone’s notice during the pandemic.

There are approximately 28 million nurses in the world. The world prayed for their success while battling the COVID-19 pandemic. This pandemic reiterated the value of nurses. We can only assume that their role will become even more essential than ever before in the healthcare industry. Therefore, nurses should develop the necessary skills to perform their tasks with efficiency and accuracy. Undeniably, without the efforts and sweats of nurses, no healthcare institute could stand its grounds.

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