Top Qualities of a Great Nurse

Nursing is one of the most respected careers in the world. Once you become a registered nurse you become a part of the community that changes people’s lives permanently. Isn’t that great? But for you to fully be part of that community you need to possess the top qualities of a great nurse.

Nursing requires one to be willing to accept challenges that change them daily. A nurse works as a team member together with other health practitioners. Once you learn to have these qualities in you, you become a vital member of the healthcare team.

Why It Is of Value to Become a Great nurse

You can refer to yourself as a great nurse but if you don’t carry with you the qualities to be one, then you are just a nurse. A great nurse carries with them the top qualities of a great nurse wherever they go. But especially to the healthcare center and uses them to bring out a positive outcome from their patients. He/ she is keen on providing care and finding solutions affecting the organization.

A great nurse should be able to advocate for their profession and their patients. How you present yourself to your patients says a lot. You will gain respect only when you learn to respect others even patients. Before you decide to learn how to become a nurse, make sure you read these top qualities of a great nurse. Being a nurse comes with a lot of responsibilities and you need to be ready mentally, physically, and emotionally.

What Are the Top Qualities of a Great Nurse

If you want to become a great nurse, make sure you have these qualities listed below. If you don’t have all of the, then make sure you learn to adapt them for you to effectively change your nursing career and your patients.

Good Communication Skills

This is one of the most important skill sets that you need to naturally learn if you want to become a nurse. You need to be able to communicate with your patients and ensure that they understand what you are saying. Great communication will also get you good relationships with your team members who can advance your career.

Once you have this skill, you will become better equipped to educate your patients and their loved ones about the medical progress, treatment, and medication of the patient. Good communication among healthcare members will help decrease the chances of mistakes and omissions being made during patient treatment.

If you don’t have good communication skills you need to learn how to actively listen first. This means you need to give your undivided attention to your patients and team members. Learn to study body language and different cultural backgrounds. Be open-minded and don’t judge.

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Empathy

This is the skill of being able to understand and experience one’s feelings without being judgmental. You showcase this skill by being able to connect and understand your patient and their family. Having this skill as a nurse will allow you to focus on your patient’s points of view, feelings, and thoughts and have a conversation with them.

Patients go through a lot of pain and suffer so much. You need to be able to have a conversation about their discomforts without you being emotionally affected so that you don’t compromise your job. In short, be like a therapist in that situation. Listen, understand but don’t judge then comfort them.

For you to be strong in this skill set you need to learn to show respect and interest in their lives. Be kind and listen to them and be in control of the situation. You need to learn to be willing to feel what they feel and understand them with no judgments.

Have Compassion

This is what will inspire action after having empathy. With compassion, you will be able to understand how your patients and your team members feel and have a strong desire to help with their feelings.

Talk with your patients to establish trust. You gain trust only if you show interest in your patient’s life. Ask about their family and background. Let them feel your friendship and love from you. Take note of the things they consider important to them. Once you gain trust, they will be able to communicate more with you about their illness and you will be able to effectively administer treatment.

Critical Thinking

When you find a problem, don’t just go whining about it. Be a great nurse with top qualities by trying to get a solution to the problem. You need to be able to access information, check your facts, and find a solution to the issue by yourself.

Take ownership of your professional decisions. Whether the patient is yours or one of the team members if you find yourself within the issue just solve it and make sure you update your team. You can strengthen this skill by learning how to identify a problem, make a medical decision, and implement the medical solution.

Be Flexible

This quality is required in all course fields. When it comes to nursing, you need to make so many sacrifices. Working on weekends and during the holidays too. The working shifts can be tight too. Most nurses work for 12 to 16 hours a day. Your family is at home and your friends are partying hard on weekends and holidays. Painful but you will find yourself getting your off when they are working.

There are so many changes happening in the medical world. A lot of technology and medical procedures keep changing every day. You need to be ready for such changes. What is known to be regular today could be odd tomorrow. When you are under pressure you need to learn how to remain professional and stay calm. Be open-minded and focus on personal values if you want to learn how to be flexible.

Be Confident

Being confident in yourself can open a lot of opportunities. You might know what you are saying but as long as you have confidence, you are good to go. Nurses with this quality can effectively provide top-quality patient treatment and are known to have good leadership skills.

To have this quality you need to have as much knowledge as you can get. If you are 100% of what you are saying your confidence level is 100 % too and you will be able to provide quality patient care. Gain as much knowledge from your team members to boost your confidence.

Clinical intuition

To have this quality you need to have nursing knowledge and a lot of nursing care experience. Without the clinical intuition quality, you won’t be able to identify patient information, have a diagnosis and have a treatment plan.

Clinical intuition will help you in making medical decisions and effectively executing patient care. This is what proves that you are a nurse. Learn to trust your gut always and be observant of what is happening around you. To clearly come up with a decision, you can get into a silent room to think through.

Be Willing to Learn

They say you need to learn something new every day before retiring to bed. Let every day be a learning day for your nursing career. Someone always knows something you don’t be. So be keen on what your team members do and say while they do their nursing practice.

With all these technological changes, you can learn from anyone in the nursing field. You can join nursing associations that offer continuing education to nurses so that you keep engaged with all the new changes being implemented.

Management of Time

You need to be able to plan and control your shift well. Don’t spend time on one patient and maybe they don’t require it. In a day as a nurse, you are required to tend to so many responsibilities. With that, you need to develop this quality if you want to be a great nurse.

If you have this quality; you will be able to attend to all your patients and complete other responsibilities on time. If you have a problem having this quality you can start by, planning out your day and prioritizing your patients’ care, and focusing on completing one duty at a time. If you can’t attend to any responsibility, communicate with your team members early to get help.

Learn to Practice Self-Care

Practicing self-care involves the ability to have emotional intelligence. You need to learn how to recognize other people’s emotions and handle them together with yours. With the overwhelming nursing schedule. Learn how to take care of yourself. For example, learn how to eat a healthy diet, get a lot of sleep and exercise as much as possible, and have good hygiene.

You need to look after yourself every time you get the chance. Incorporate visiting family and friends on your off days, doing yoga and meditation, or even taking a walk to relax your mind and nerves. If your mind is tired you won’t be able to execute patient treatment care effectively.

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Mentorship

Learn to share your knowledge with others too. If you are assigned an intern, guide them and help them develop their nursing skills. Be a leader to them and don’t be selfish. A nurse mentor helps his/ her team members with emotional support, and motivates and builds their confidence by sharing their knowledge.

To become a good mentor, learn how to listen and understand others and provide them with the knowledge they require. Have a positive attitude toward your job and your colleagues. Mentors are good at learning from their mistakes so that they can be able to mentor other nurses to become better nurses than they are.

Get Started On Your Nursing Career

To wrap things up, each one of us is capable of changing. You may have read these top qualities of becoming a great nurse and feel like giving up. Don’t, you may not have all the qualities but some just need patience in learning them. Engage with nurses who you know have these qualities and it will be easy for you to adopt them.

If you feel like these qualities are too much for you, don’t be disappointed. There are so many ways you can implicate change into other people’s lives. Hopefully that these qualities will build your strength as a nurse and become a great nurse who effectively executes patient care significantly.