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So, What Do Nurses Know?

Nurses Know a Lot

• When people are admitted to the hospital, it's for nursing care 24/7, not doctoring. Unlike physicians, who focus on diagnosing and treating diseases and injuries, nurses focus on treating the human response to illness -- we focus on how health challenges affect patients and their families.
• Nursing school is no walk in the park! In addition to nursing core courses and general studies, we study anatomy and physiology, pharmacology, microbiology, chemistry and social sciences.

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What Do Nurses Really Do?

Professional registered nurses have these key characteristics¹:

• Clinical judgment. Nurses collect and interpret complex information about their patients and make clinical decisions based on that information. We focus on the whole picture, and are constantly re-evaluating patients' conditions and their responses to our care. When necessary, we modify our plan to better meet our patients' needs.
• Advocacy and moral agency. Nurses are required to be patient advocates, which means we work on behalf of patients and families. We work hard to understand what is important to the people we serve, particularly when patients' cultural background is different from our own.
• Caring practices. Nursing is not a technical job. Caring practices create an environment that is compassionate and therapeutic. We treat patients as individuals who face unique challenges. An important element here is realizing that death is not always the worst outcome, and making the commitment to do everything possible to keep patients comfortable and to maintain their dignity.
• Collaboration. Nurses do not practice in a vacuum; we rely on experts on the health care team such as respiratory, occupational, and physical therapists, registered dietitians, pharmacists, radiologic technologists, radiation therapists, medical technologists, and other specialists as needed to optimize patient care.
• Clinical inquiry. With the amazing speed at which standards change, nurses must continually stay up-to-date. We must regularly re-examine our practice to determine if there is a better, more efficient, cost-effective, safer or more effective way to care for our patients. Nursing research is more important in today's fast-changing world than ever before.
• Patient/family educator. As nurses, we are your information resource. Nurses teach people how to cope with a newly diagnosed illness and we provide instructions when people leave the hospital or the ER. We are natural problem solvers. 

From a personal perspective, it is my commitment to patient/family/consumer education that has motivated me to write What Nurses Know, to develop the PBS special, Hints for Health: A Nurse's Notebook® and to write the articles at Nurse's Notebook.com for you.

¹American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN)

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But Don't Nurses Take Orders From Doctors?

• Sometimes we do. But in the best situations, we work in partnership with physicians to provide the most appropriate care to our patients. Nurses have their own licenses and there are many things we can do without orders from anyone.
• Nurse practitioners, (formally called advanced practice registered nurses or APRNs) can write prescriptions and care for patients independently.²

² Degree of independence varies from state-to-state

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Who is Pat Carroll?

Pat Carroll began her career as a respiratory therapist, a graduate of Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY. She returned to school to become a registered nurse, and is a proud alumna of Excelsior College School of Nursing based in Albany, NY, the largest nursing school in the United States. She has additional degrees in education and nursing. More...

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How Can I Get More Information?

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