Nurses involved in hospitalized care serve many functions, including gathering information, attending conferences, and making nursing plans and keeping nursing records, in order to properly support the patients' lives and treatment. The support that nurses directly provide every day is highly visible to other professionals. On the other hand, the process for doing so, namely what the nurses see, how they make decisions, and how they plan the support for the patients, is not as easily observable.
Nurses, upon determining the content and level of support, evaluate patients based on six domains, namely "air, water, and food," "elimination," "personal hygiene," "activity and rest," "solitude and social interaction," and "ability to maintain safety," which collectively comprise the self-care nursing model, on 5 levels from "total assistance" to "independent." Nurses also consider factors that may affect the level of self-care, and decide on the methods and measures of support.
In order to clearly assert the specialty of nursing and encourage its utilization by other professionals, nurses need to communicate their gathered information and rationale for their decisions by making the above-mentioned process visible. In addition, as nursing has long served to "maintain safety," we should continue to promote the safety and security of patients and their supporters.
<Author's abstract>
The Role of Nurses in Hospitalized Care and Their Specialty
Heartland Shigisan, General Foundation of Shigisan Hospital
Psychiatria et Neurologia Japonica
120: 529-536, 2018
<Keywords:psychiatric nursing, hospitalization, self-care nursing model>