Is Professional Training Alone Enough to Keep Nurses Performing to Standard - Essay Example

"Is Professional Training Alone Enough to Keep Nurses Performing to Standard?" is a great example of a paper on care.
Research questions to be answered and evaluated in this literature review involve the performance of practicing nurses. Is professional training alone enough to keep nurses performing to standard and above? Are spiritual beliefs a factor in the performance of nursing staff? What level of spirituality do nurses profess in their personal lives and what is the role of spiritualism in the ultimate healing of the patient. To conduct a literature review I used the MEDLINE database with a subset of nursing, searched literature published between 2004 and 2012, and reviewed all publication types.

Literature was difficult to locate with large sample sizes as most consisted of study sizes too small to be considered as fact though they pointed out the need for further study. Spirituality is often lacking in nursing training and many feel inadequate in providing spiritual care. Spiritual care plans are not always developed or followed and facilities that aren’t specialized are less likely to offer training in spiritual care.

Specialized care such as palliative or oncology is more often the target location of providing more training in spiritual care. Advanced education is thought to be directly related to the nurse’s comfort level in delivering spiritual care. Patient satisfaction in this area is not often the focus of performance improvement plans though when training is implemented valid results show patient satisfaction is increased.

Spiritual beliefs are a factor in the nurse’s ability to provide spiritual care through spirituality is poorly defined across the spectrum of specialty areas and is not consistent. There is a lack of studies in the ultimate healing of the patient in regards to spirituality. Literature is more focused on the ability of the nurse to provide spiritual care. Despite the availability of large sample sizes or meta-analyses, the literature supports the need for more thorough research on a much larger scale to examine the role of spirituality in the nursing profession and the ultimate outcome of the patient’s health.