As a registered nurse, you need to ensure that you aren’t just focusing on dealing with diseases and illnesses as they come; you also need to be prepared to catch them before they become serious problems. Registered nurses need to be able to monitor both their patients and their communities to prevent outbreaks.
But there’s more to monitor than just your patients’ temperatures and fevers. You also need to ensure you know what you should monitor. Here are some of the things that you need to be looking at for a registered nurse. The more items you can monitor, the easier it will be to catch people whenever they are sick.
What is a registered nurse?
A registered nurse or RN is a licensed medical professional who provides hands-on care for different medical groups. They can work in many medical fields and positions, including hospitals, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, and long-term care facilities. These nurses work directly with patients, doctors, and various healthcare team members to ensure everyone is on the same page.
These nurses manage the care of their patients, control infections, communicate and promote health, and provide basic care for everyone they work with. Depending on the spaces where the nurses work, they can perform various duties to help their patients. This can include assisting patients to get ready for exams or treatments, recording the medical history of the patient, prescribing and administering medication, and teaching patients how to manage any conditions they have.
How do you become a registered nurse?
Every RN will need to follow the rules of the state they are in to become registered and fully licensed. Many nurses will need to enroll in a nursing program before taking a national licensing exam. Whether you take an Associate Nursing Program (ADN) or a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program, an online fast-track nursing program is an excellent option. Marymount University offers a range of outstanding programs, including an online accelerated BSN. The BSN includes online coursework and offers clinical placement support, making it a valuable option for those wishing to become qualified registered nurses. In this course, you will learn everything you need to know about how to become a professional nurse by assessing the client’s physical and mental health and how to research your client and provide evidence-based nursing for your clients.
After you complete your program, you need to take the NCLEX-RN exam, which tests you on the four key areas of nursing practice. These include the nursing process, caring, communication, and teaching. Upon qualification, you can either stay as an RN or focus on specializing in other areas. These include becoming an emergency room nurse, an intensive care unit nurse, or a pediatric nurse. You can even further specialize and get a master’s or doctoral degree.
What should registered nurses be focused on?
Registered nurses, especially those in the field of public health, focus on working with people and communities to improve health and safety. Many public health specialists focus on the various factors affecting people’s health. They also focus on preventative medicine, where they work with communities to prevent disease from occurring in the first place.
There are many environmental, genetic, and lifestyle factors that influence a population’s health, and it is the job of a registered nurse to focus on them. Here are some things that need to be focused on and understood as you work with the community.
What is in the air?
For starters, one factor that can affect the health of a population is air quality. There are plenty of air pollutants and allergens in the air, and when we breathe those in, they can get into our bodies. They can irritate our eyes, noses, mouths, and skin and affect our health in general. Sometimes, pollutants can get into our bloodstream and can cause or worsen diseases.
If we breathe polluted air for long, serious health problems can and will occur. Various parts of the body, as well as other preexisting diseases and health conditions, can become much worse with exposure to polluted air.
Allergens can adversely affect our health. Depending on what people are allergic to and whether it is in the air (such as pollen or ragweed), they can suffer a wide range of health conditions and problems. While many allergies can’t be cured, medication can reduce their severity and allow people with allergies to live normal lives.
What does the patient’s lifestyle look like?
It is amazing how a good diet, serious exercise, and a healthy lifestyle can positively impact our general health. These things are enough for many to ward off serious injury and disease. However, some people don’t have a healthy lifestyle. Regardless of everything else, the patient’s lifestyle will inform and affect their health choices.
Many registered nurses focus on communicating to their patients and the community about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. Nurses can tell their patients about the newest health trends and risks in the world. Additionally, many RNs can push people toward resources that will make them healthier.
Nutritionists, exercise and health coaches, and other experts can all help patients figure out their ideal exercise and diet plans. Then, they can work toward a healthy lifestyle that suits their needs and will certainly increase their health and their chance of fighting off disease.
Registered nurses can ask the right questions about their patient’s lifestyles and help them figure out how to make them much healthier. The more they communicate about health and discuss optimal strategies for health within a community, the more educated people will be and the better choices they will make.
Stress and mental health
Of course, as much as registered nurses focus on physical health and wellness, they should also continue to consider mental health. Everyone knows that stress and poor mental health can very easily turn into physical health problems if you aren’t careful. If you aren’t taking care of your mental health, it can and will make you sick.
A good registered nurse will look at your lifestyle and see where your physical health can be improved, and your mental health can be improved. A good RN will try to identify pain points, stressors, and areas where you are constantly under stress. Then, they will try to help you reduce that stress. Whether that is through eliminating the situation, reducing the amount of stress you are feeling, or allowing you to take the time to focus on good self-care habits.
One of these strategies, or all of them, will allow patients to manage their mental health properly. The role of an RN is to help patients understand any mental health issues they are dealing with and connect with relevant or useful resources.
The impact of work
One last issue with lifestyle is the occupational hazards associated with a job. For many workers, occupational hazards are in their line of work. All jobs come with risks, whether that be physical injury or stress. RNs are trained to help patients through any risks associated with their jobs so that they can be happy and healthy at work.
For example, even with a sedentary job, you can still injure yourself. Posture problems, issues with your hands and eyesight from being at the computer all day, and other health issues can occur. The role of an RN is to educate patients on these risks and offer solutions to mitigate the chances of physical or mental strain. With the right education, prevention, and treatment plans in place, everyone will have the opportunity to balance work with upholding their physical and mental health.
Genetic traits and hereditary conditions
Finally, your patients’ health doesn’t start and stop with them; rather, it goes up their family tree. Various hereditary conditions put patients at risk, and genetics can increase the risk of your patient getting or developing a serious illness at some point in their lives.
Communicate with your patient about their genetic information and outline a plan to screen for these issues at every checkup. Additionally, if there is anything you can do to prevent these genetic problems from occurring, make sure your patient is prepared to do it.
The more you prepare for potential genetic traps and long-term problems, the greater the chance you will catch them for your patient. Don’t be afraid to delve into your patient’s family history and make sure that nothing will cause major health problems down the line.
How often should these checkups be monitored? These elements should be touched on with every checkup visit. During these checkups, you should start to see some improvement in your patients’ physical and mental health attitudes. This should also translate to increased health across the board. Don’t be afraid to take the time to ask your patients how they are doing with some of the items you have discussed and get a good sense of their progress.
Additionally, if you are working with a team to ensure that your patient’s health is handled properly, then you need to check up and make sure that communication with your team is effective. The same goes for if you are talking with your community. You don’t just need to check in with the community to see how their health is doing; you also need to speak with community leaders. They will be your lifeline to ensure you know everything that is happening with the community. In turn, you will be able to talk to them, and they will be able to help you communicate with the overall community.
Keeping your finger on the pulse of your patients and the wider community will help you focus laser-like on their health and needs. Then, you can focus on enhancing their health and making them the best versions of themselves.
Don’t be afraid to communicate with the patients.
The more you communicate with your patients and ask the right questions about everything impacting their health, the more you will find that they have problems you can solve. As a registered nurse, your job isn’t just to handle illnesses when they come but also to prevent them entirely. Solving these problems will prove the old maxim, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!”
