Registered Nurses and Nurse

COMPETENCY & CLINICAL REASONING |

Competency and Clinical Reasoning

The society should be able to trust professional nurses to display a high level of competence in their work (American Nurses Association, 2013). All nurses have a personal responsibility to ensure their level of competence remains as high as possible. The Nursing associations are tasked with the job of creating a procedure of assessing competence of nurses. Competency in this context refers to the quality of work that a patient looks forward to from a nurse and it is characterized by high knowledge levels, well-honed skills and capabilities as well as good deduction ability.

Clinical reasoning is a commonly used phrase in medical writing where it could appear in its other forms such as medical judgment, analytical reasoning, solution provision and others. Clinical reasoning refers to a procedure in which nurses and other health personnel gather signs and signals, decipher what they could mean and with this, make a diagnosis of a patient's illness. Solutions are then developed and administered, and its results accessed to detect ways through which the solutions can be improved. This procedure is based on the level of analytical reasoning and it's affected by the general opinions, beliefs and notions held by the subject. Clinical reasoning cannot be accurately described as a linear system however it could be projected as a complex web of medical experiences (Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, 2009).

Use of Competency and Clinical Reasoning by Family Nurse Consultants

According to Benner, Hughes and Sutphen (2008), medical reasoning to family nurse consultants is an important and experience-based type of reasoning that is dependent on previous knowledge of scientific and technical deductions from normal occurrences. The dependence of clinical reasoning on previous experience to family nurse consultants is much more pronounced compared to the other nursing fields. Furthermore, family nurse consultants are expected to be equipped with the capability of identifying useful deductions from relevant scientific and technical information and how they can be used to help a specific patient. This process requires the nurse to discern the patient's medical records, their fears and likes and their identified adverse reactions to medical treatments, and then consider all these before making a medical verdict.

Some of the duties of the family nurse consultant are preventive therapy, clinical tests, medical deductions and care of short and long-term medical disorders for single patients as well as households. Family nurse consultants are dedicated to improving the quality of life of the family and they fully grasp the importance of the subject family's surroundings and relationships to the efficacy and success of their medical treatments (College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia, 2011).

From the research carried out by Gormley, Misener and Burge in 2013, it was established that a nurse consultant is simply a nurse with higher levels of knowledge and skills in medical deductions and therapy. Family nurse consultants should have advanced knowledge about medical therapy and how it could be administered to people across all age groups i.e. neonates, infants, babies, kids, teenagers, youths, mature people, pregnant and just delivered women and aged people. The family nurse consultant applies the years of experience and skills developed from treating people and their family members of various age groups to this new medical field whose application is normally needed in neighborhood hospitals and sick bays. Nevertheless, family nurse consultants are not restricted in their work. They could create relationships with patients from all age groups and in some cases, assume the role of the major health persona for specific people and their households.

As a practicing family nurse consultant, there are specific qualities I have to possess in order to effectively follow the procedures involved in clinical reasoning. These qualities include:

Expertise, responsibility and integrity -- These three values make up the main qualities of professional nurses and they are equally the key features of consultant nurses in medical practice, management, research study and teamwork. Nurse consultants have to be able to concurrently combine and apply abilities with ease, a key indicator of their critical analysis and therapy skill as well as high level of knowledge in clinical elements (College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia, 2011).

Disease Examination and Verdict -- Family nurse consultants should be able to create a technical information and analytical assessment basis for giving medical verdicts and essential patient advice. Thus, while participating in medical reasoning, I will interact closely with the patient to understand his/her lifestyle and its associated health dangers and then educate the patient on general healthy living and its benefits (College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia, 2011)