What does personal identity mean in the field of nursing, and why is it significant? Although the word "professional identity" is accepted across a wide range of fields, nursing literature and research. People rarely use the terms "professional identity" or "professional identity creation.” The effectiveness of nursing practice, education, and regulation can be increased by comprehending and supporting the formation of professional identities in nurses.
Personal Identity Formation
According to the National League for Nursing, a nurse develops a professional identity when they internalize and consider the profession's key values, take part in personal and professional development activities, and gain experience in clinical settings as they advance in their careers.
By adopting the fundamental principles of nursing and interacting with peers, teachers, and patients during their time in nursing school, nurses start to shape their professional identities.
As they start to think, feel, and act like nurses, students combine critical thinking and clinical reasoning with these essential values. After graduating from nursing school and beginning to practice it professionally, the nurse continues to foster the growth of professional identity through interacting with other nurses in the practice setting.
Ethics and principles
The ability to collaborate with colleagues to enhance the workplace and influence patient outcomes is perhaps the most important factor in developing a professional identity in nursing. In their clinical environments, nurses will all run into moral conundrums.
The ANA Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (the Code) calls on nurses to be accountable for creating, preserving, and developing an ethical work environment and making sure that employment conditions are favorable to providing safe, high-quality healthcare.
Individual and group nursing activities that involve students, members of inter-professional teams, and leaders should be part of these initiatives. Nurses must work with other inter-professional team members while making ethical decisions.
Impact of professional identity on the nursing field
The profession further shapes nurses' identities as they strengthen and advance their professional identities, according to research, which shows that nurses' professional identities begin before nursing education.
Your Professional Identity Development
Nurses are responsible for their lifetime learning, competency, and continual professional growth. Experience, evidence-based practice, and scientific discovery serve as the foundation for this understanding.
In school, where they pick up new knowledge, skills, roles, and responsibilities, entry-level (prelicensure) and advanced-level (advanced practice RN) nursing students start to grow and form their professional identities. In clinical practice, they continue to grow, learn, and experience as they develop their professional identities.
Being a nurse leader involves knowing your own professional identity and assisting others in achieving their goals through coaching and mentoring. Knowing why you do what you do can help you model a strong professional identity, a love of your job, and a real devotion to your patients and their families.
The ability to think, behave, and feel like a nurse reflects one's sense of self as a professional. Your training, employment, and life experiences have given you acquired knowledge, abilities, professional habits, ideals, principles, and objectives that will guide you in productive and satisfying work.
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