Prioritization In Nursing Profession Essay

Prioritization in Nursing Profession

Barbara Frys

Chamberlain College of Nursing

NR103: Transition to the Nursing Profession

September 2016

Prioritization in Nursing Profession

Prioritization is the dilemma that nurses have to face more than once during their professional lives. In disregard of the settings that they work, nurses need to decide what needs to be done first and what can wait. Moreover, prioritization has been recognized by nurses as the most difficult issue to overcome especially for these working in the emergency wards. “Ethical challenges in nursing emergency practice” is the study done by Kari Langeland and Venke Sørlie and published in Journal of Clinical Nursing that discusses difficulties of prioritization

Often there is no right choice that they can make, but there is only the best choice. This often leaves a nurse feeling that his or hers judgment was not ideal in given situation. Langeland and Sørlie (2011) argue ”The nurses found the most difficult things about emergency care were the numerous patients, the busy days and the difficult priorities that have to be made. They sensed the necessity of having a tremendous capacity to cater to everyone’s needs simultaneously and therefore found it difficult to provide satisfactory service for everyone” (p. 2067). Nurses need to divide their limited time between many patients and provide their patients with quality of care. When that becomes physically impossible, nurses can feel that they could have done more for their patients. I feel that making a thoughtful assessment and perform all duties in the right order can be very challenging. Furthermore, nurses are responsible for using their best judgment in making these decisions in timely matter, which I think is even harder to do. The ability to prioritize