Characteristics of a Professional Nurse and the Difference Between RN and LPN Research Paper

Introduction

There are many different types of nurses in the field of health care. Nurses can have a lot of education and training or relatively little. They can operate based on a specific nursing theory, or they may operate strictly according to the framework applied by their employer at their health care facility. No two nurses need be much alike in terms of personality or professional perspective. However, professional nurses do tend to share common characteristics needed for providing quality care to patients. This paper will describe the characteristics of the professional nurse, and relate the differences between the registered nurse (RN) and the licensed practical nurse (LPN).

Characteristics of a Professional Nurse

The characteristics of the professional nurse that most patients and employers are going to expect to see include: compassion, the ability to communicate, a sense of emotional and social intelligence, the willingness to care for others, critical thinking skills, and the ability to collaborate. All of these are characteristics are essential in the field of nursing because each one relates to the nurse’s facility in providing quality care for patients.

First is compassion. Compassion is understood as empathy, the desire to show care, the ability to put oneself in another shoes, sympathy, concern and kindness. A nurse cannot effectively be a nurse without compassion. It is the foundation of nursing upon which all the other skills are built (Sacco & Copel, 2018). When compassion fatigue strikes, it causes nurses to lose their zest, and it most often results from continuous exposure to a patient who appears indifferent to the nurse’s commiseration (Peters, 2018). Nurses have to be on guard to preserve their compassion even in the face of indifference, because when compassion goes so too can quality care.

The ability to communicate is one of the next most importance qualities of a nurse. This is because nurses do not work alone but rather are part of a health care team of nurses. Health care professionals from other areas may also be involved in a patient’s care, so communication skills are absolutely a must from the point of view of the professional side of nursing. However, they are also important insofar as the patient is concerned. If the patient feels the nurse is incommunicative, the patient’s anxiety is going to be high, and the patient will not feel satisfied with the quality of care being received.

Emotional and social intelligence must, therefore, play a part in the nurse’s character, as these tools help to facilitate communication and collaboration. Emotional and social intelligence refers to the ability to understand the emotional needs of others and respond accordingly (Minster, 2020). By knowing how to respond in a given situation, whether with one’s nursing peers and associates or with one’s patients,…

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…and handling tasks such as vitals checking, bathing of patients, and so on. Their job in a hospital would be to facilitate the RN, and they would not move up in terms of rank in a hospital setting. However, in long-term care settings, LPNs can move up to acquire administrative duties after so many years of experience on the job.

The RN thus has more utility, applicability and responsibility in the health care field; the LPN’s duties are more limited. Yet, even the RN is limited to some degree and is outstripped in terms of professional abilities by the Advance Practice Registered Nurse (APRN). The APRN can diagnose and treat patients and write prescriptions; the APRN is in fact trained to be able to operate on her own, without oversight from a physician. Not every state permits APRNs to operate independently, however. The RN and the LPN certainly are not permitted to operate independently.

Conclusion

The field of nursing is such that it depends upon professionals who have a strong character rooted in compassion and a willingness to care for others. These professionals must receive some education and training in the field: the least education requirements are for LPN certification; the RN is next, followed by the APRN. All types of nurses have utility in the field and should thus be considered important. However, the degree or certificate a nurse obtains depends…