Revisiting the Image

One quality of a nurse that I think is less represented in popular media is confidentiality/documentation. Confidentiality is so important to maintain as a nurse because of legal reasons, and more importantly it builds trust with your patient. It is essential that you keep all verbal, written, and electronic communications with patients private, and only share their information with their other providers and authorized personnel such as allowed family. It’s also important to document everything you do when treating a patient, This prevents errors related to medications and care. Both of these skills are very important to the role of nursing, but they are rarely talked about or shown in elements such as tv shows. Documentation and Confidentiality probably are some of the less interesting aspects of nursing, but they are absolutely essential to provide the best care possible and meet the patient’s needs. Nursing roles such as counseling caring and teaching definitely seem the most appealing, but you can’t perform these roles to the best of your ability without confidentiality and documentation. It may be challenging to get excited about tasks such as documentation, but if you remember that this is part of the care the patient needs, then these seemingly “boring” tasks will be easier.