Essential Elements of the Nursing Department are given below:
1. Dichotomy in Technical and Managerial Responsibilities:
The nurse has a distinct function of management in relation to planning of direct-care inputs. The needs of the patient for comfort, safety, understanding, etc. are in many instances as urgent as his requirement for intervention of a technical nature.
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Most nurses recognise the need for the senior nurse-manager to keep in touch with changing clinical practices in order to determine priorities for nursing management, also recognising that she may not participate in direct nursing care.
Individual responsibility for the total nursing care of a number of patients during her shift involves planning, providing and evaluating the care. Such a nurse need not hold a position above the group members, but has a temporary, functional authority to coordinate the work.
Hospital administrators are not well-equipped for managing nursing services. But hospital administrators must share management information with nursing administrators.
Often, nursing superintendents are not given adequate status in the administrative hierarchy as evidenced by the fact that they may not attend staff meetings.
2. Evaluation:
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The nursing department must be in a position to maintain nursing services at a high level of efficiency. For this, periodic evaluation should be undertaken to assess the changing needs due to altered policies, shifting emphasis in management of the patients, and introduction of new technologies.
Nursing as a profession is old but has only recently been able to attain a mouthpiece professional association in meeting the criteria of self-governance, source of professional and self-discipline, standards, ethics and cohesiveness. However, such professional associations should encourage self-evaluation at the hospital level.
3. Efficiency:
The nurse can give her best service only if she is assigned to the service that is of greatest interest to her. Although this is not always possible, special consideration should be given to the nurse’s personal choice of service, and she should be transferred to that service as soon as possible if she cannot be assigned to it at once.
Assignment to a service should not, however, be limited to one ward. It is best to allow the nurse to become expert in the field of her choice, but this does not preclude assigning her to another ward for several hours of assistance from time-to-time when absence of personnel or especially heavy workload of very ill patients requires the service that a well-trained staff nurse can give:
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Growth of specialties also means the growth of specially trained nurses for ICU, OT, dialysis, neurosurgery, burn unit, neonatology, etc.
4. Job Satisfaction:
Job satisfaction of nurses does not mean monetary satisfaction alone but also the joy attained from doing their work. This satisfaction has a relationship with good colleague relations, good service conditions, and the enjoyment gained from merely doing a particular kind of work.
About nurses opting for higher academic qualifications, there is diversity of thought on what should be the content of this long and disciplined educational process; collegiate nursing education is separated from direct patient care and intensive patient contact as opposed to hospital-based nursing diploma course.
Long distances from home to hospital and consequent transport problems have tended to restrict the nurses employment preference for conveniently located hospitals.
The opportunity of recruiting nurses living in the neighbourhood of the hospital should be considered, because constantly changing shift duties are an inescapable part of a nurse’s career. Nurses living in the neighbourhood of the hospital have a better level of job satisfaction.