preview

Nursing At The 21st Century

Better Essays

Nursing in the 21st Century As healthcare moves from the Industrial Age to the Information Age, a new role for nurses as knowledge workers comes in its wake (McGonigle & Mastrians, 2015). In his definition of a knowledge worker, O’Grady cited “that the knowledge worker is someone who synthesizes a broad array of information and knowledge from a wide variety of sources and brings that synthesis to bear on nursing work” (O’Grady & Malloch, 2003, para. 2). Thus, a knowledge worker is one who translates and integrates information that would eventually be applied in the context of patient care (O’Grady & Malloch, 2003). Nurses, as knowledge workers, therefore, have moved “from the process and function orientation to that of outcome and evidence-based direction” (O’Grady & Malloch, 2015, para. 1). Nurses Are Knowledge Workers. How Does Nursing Move From Measuring The Tasks Completed To Measuring The Final Outcome Of The Patient? As a knowledge worker, a nurse moves from the role of a “data gatherer, information user, knowledge user, and knowledge builder, respectively” (McGonigle & Mastrians, 2015, p. 114). It is in the role of a knowledge user that the nurse starts to take “notice of the trends in a patient’s clinical data and determines whether the clinical data fall within or outside the normal data range” (p. 114). In measuring the final outcome of the patient as suggested by O’Grady and Malloch (2003) Not only should we empower patients, but also we simply don’t

Get Access