Attributes for Professional Growth When

¶ … Attributes for Professional Growth

When does learning stop? In reality, it never does. In this, learning is a crucial part of an ongoing Professional Growth that continues throughout the length of a nurse's career. Professional Growth is an ongoing process that encapsulates the need to consistently learn from one's self and one's surroundings. The literature reviewed here presents a theoretical model of Professional Growth as an ongoing progress into various stages that blend self-awareness with an acute scientific and objective viewpoint that allows the nurse practitioner to evaluate their own actions and progress in a proactive manner that continues to provide crucial clinical and life lessons for them.

Defining Professional Growth is a difficult concept, because it is so fluid and is relative to each individual and their professional goals. Yet, one thing is clear, it never ends. Essentially, there is a constant need for Professional growth throughout a nurse's career in actual practice because of the notion that practice is highly unpredictable and incorporates new lessons to be learned daily. The modern nurse is exposed to a "highly dynamic and intense clinical environment burdened by escalating levels of patient acuity and nursing workload" (Boychuck, 2008, p 441). In response to dealing with the problems of this new environment, the nurse progresses throughout his or her career with the lessons learned and the experiences that are internalized. As such, Professional Growth relates to the growth of the individual beyond just compliance-based structures, where that individual is constantly searching for answers and solutions, both in their professional and personal life. Professional Growth allows the nurse to grow beyond what is simply expected of him or her, and incorporates an unending gathering of knowledge to continuously respond to new situations. In this, the nurse must focus on "learning how to learn" (Erhenberg & Haggbloom, 2007, p 68). By being exposed to situations with problems, the growing nurse practitioner must react to those problems. The ongoing and increasing critical problem solving they develop is then a part of their professionalization (Keogh, 2008).

One of the main antecedents for Professional Growth is the individual's desire to continue searching and learning, even while in actual practice. The idea that the nurse who wants to grow must continue to learn is a crucial element for the facilitation of Professional Growth. Here, Erhenberg and Haggblom (2007) suggest that those who are interested in continuing to grow in their career "are expected to learn nursing skills and procedures and to deepen the search for knowledge, critical thinking, and problem solving, as well as personally and professionally" (Erhenberg & Haggbloom, 2007, p 68). In order to encourage Professional Growth, the individual must be committed to developing a keen sense of "self knowledge and scientific awareness in addition to their gradual improvement in professional nursing" (Erhenberg & Haggbloom, 2007, p 68).

Deep self-reflection and an understanding of how t blend the lessons learned about the self with those observed from the external world around the individual facilitating true Professional Growth.

Additionally, there are clear consequences for progressing further on a path of Professional Growth. For example, individuals who do proceed to grow in their career paths in clinical nursing fields will begin to transition into new paths and structures as they learn more about themselves as active agents within flexible health strategies. There are a number of transitions that help facilitate Professional Growth, and are in fact, different for every individual based on circumstances and self-awareness levels. These transitions help push the individual further along in their goal of Professional Growth and help provide a foundation for future learning of new stage developments as they continue to grow. Essentially, "transitions have been defined as passages or movements from one state, condition, or place to another which can produce profound alterations in the lives of individuals and their significant others and have important implications for well-being and health" (Boychuck, 2008, p 442). Progressing from one stage to another has huge consequences, mostly positive in regards to how the individual nurse practitioner sees the practice and reacts to needs within the field. Boychuck (2008) describes the three major transitions in nursing Professional Growth as doing, being, knowing. First, the nurse is exposed to the knowledge that allows them to do their job. In this, they are simply doing what they are told, and have little contributions back to their field. Then that same nurse can expand their experience through actually acting on that knowledge and being a crucial member of the healthcare environment. Once enough experience is amassed on the foundation of actually practicing in the real world, the nurse can then transcend into knowing, where they become a method of change and innovation in a field where they were simply a worker before. Reaching the final stage here has a consequence of great empowerment for the nurse practitioner in that he or she can give back into the practice through innovative and theoretical contributions. As such, the transitions of Professional Growth begin in following orders and strategies and then lead to helping create them. In this concept, the nurse becomes "professionalized" and becomes a contributing member, although that nurse still has room to continue to grow within nursing practice for as long as they are involved within it (Keogh, 2008, p 302).