New Graduate Nurses: Tips & Tricks

 

Nursing is a well-respected profession in Canada. Students pursuing nursing courses in Canada must gear up to identify multiple rewarding career opportunities that are diverse in nature. The scope of nursing in Canada is wide, ranging from providing direct patient care to working in healthcare administration, teaching, research, and more.

Identified as an essential part of the Canadian healthcare system, nursing professionals are responsible for providing care to patients with varying needs for healthcare services. The scope of nursing in Canada is extensive and includes many different specialties and roles that nurses can accept professionally.

After graduating from nursing school, becoming a nursing professional is an exciting time, but it can also be intimidating. So, let us help you out with some tips and tricks that can go a long way in making your journey as a nurse a smoother one!

Research Your Options

The first step in transitioning from student nurse to professional is researching your options. There is a wide scope of nursing in Canada. There are several types of nursing roles ranging from acute care nurses working in a hospital setting to home health nurses providing care at patient homes. Consider what type of nursing you want to do and research the unusual places you can do it. Then, begin applying for jobs you think you would enjoy and that fit your skill set.

Get Familiar with Your Workplace

Once you have accepted a job offer, get familiar with your workplace before starting your role. Before day one, read any materials sent by the employer such as employee policies or handbooks, dress codes, or safety protocols. If possible, take a tour of the workplace so that on day one you already know where things are located and how things operate at your new job. Knowing where everything is will help reduce stress and make the transition smoother for you and your colleagues.

Set Goals for Yourself

Any professional needs to have goals; this is especially true for new graduate nurses who may not yet understand their full capabilities or what they can accomplish in their role. Set small goals that are achievable in the short term (such as learning all the names of patients or staff members) as well as larger goals that may take longer periods (such as mastering a specific clinical procedure or becoming certified in a specialty). Having specific goals will help keep you motivated, engaged, and organized throughout your transition period into the workforce.

Conclusion

Making the transition from student nurse to professional nurse can be an exciting yet daunting experience. To make this process easier on yourself—and those around you—research your options before accepting a job offer; get familiar with your workplace before starting and set both short-term and long-term goals for yourself during this period of transition. With these tips and tricks in mind, any new graduate nurse can make the shift into their new role more smoothly—and more confidently!

How to Comfort a Patient in Pain?

Nurses are in charge of ensuring that their patients do not go through pain in most circumstances. If at all patients do then it is on nurses to comfort their patients. In most cases, pain can be managed and this is particularly when the nurses take some time to communicate with their nurses and doctors.

For instance, a charge nurse is taught to ensure that patients are always asked if they are going through any pain. They are taught to ask questions and find out more about how the patient is feeling so that the pain can be relieved.

There are tangible ways in which nurses can comfort a patient who is suffering from pain.

1. Communicate Effectively: Communicating with patients can prove to be healing and even an effective method to manage chronic pain. The nurses must be able to communicate effectively with patients while conducting as many patient interviews as possible.

When nurses accept a patient’s pain without showing any kind of irritation, the results along with the emotional benefits are really well. Being empathetic and responsive helps the nurses and patients handle all medical conditions positively.

2. Offer Comfort: Nursing education teaches students to offer comfort to patients during their stay at the hospital. When it comes down to practice, nurses realize that they are primarily responsible for offering comfort to patients.

The nurses can offer comfort and even help patients to stay warm, groomed, and looked after in the most difficult situations. Nurses are responsible for ensuring the well-being of patients and to ensure that nothing interferes with their safety.

3. Encouraging Relaxing Entertainment: Nurses can encourage relaxing entertainment so that the attention of most patients gets diverted and they can focus on lighter things. Nurses can also ask to bring books, magazines, and playing cards so that the patients stay relaxed.

Activities such as streaming a movie, knitting, solving a puzzle, and getting involved in some craft can also help get distracted. These things may seem small but they are helpful.

4. Set Sleeping Schedule: Sleep is very important for a person’s well-being and healing. Nurses must make sure that patients take rest and have undisturbed sleep every time it is possible.

Many times, a charge nurse can also request a sleep kit with ear plugs and an eye shield. This helps in sleeping well.

5. Continuous Medication: As the pain of most patients increases, there is a need for more medication for combating it. For some patients, the medication must be administered for over 24 hours a day and nurses must check if a patient’s body has become physically dependent or used to drugs.

The pain control measures must be taken per medical order and the effectiveness of the medical treatment should be monitored with each visit.

Conclusion:

Comforting a patient who is suffering from pain is extremely important and that too at the right time. There are many ways that nurses can follow to do this. However, some of the best ones are mentioned above.

Impact of the Pandemic on Nursing Workforce in Canada

The COVID-19 pandemic posed prominent challenges to the nursing profession. Students pursuing nursing courses in Canada had to face many challenges. 

After the pandemic, there has been a need to overcome the challenges in nursing education and workforce for promoting the professional development of nurses. In Canada, nurses are the foundation of the healthcare system. Together with other healthcare professionals, nurses keep the system running. 

Mentioned below are the four key factors that highlight the impact of the pandemic on the nursing workforce in Canada.  

Nursing Workforce Supply: 

There was an increase in the supply of healthcare workers including nurses and other healthcare professionals. Physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, pharmacists, and everyone increased in numbers. Most of these healthcare professionals worked in a role related to their field of expertise. 

Nursing Workforce Capacity: 

New ways were looked to build the healthcare workforce capacity. The increase in supply of healthcare workers helped in welcoming the new entrants to the profession. 

Many nursing professionals including the ones who had just completed their nursing courses in Canada joined their practice. Despite the increased workforce, healthcare worker infections sometimes led to shortages. This further led many healthcare settings to implement ways for maintaining suitable and safe staffing levels

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Nursing Workforce in Virtual Care: 

For containing the spread of COVID, so many healthcare professionals started offering virtual care including physicians. Many nurses along with physicians started offering virtual care services in Canada. This led nurses to explore the digital medium for offering healthcare services. 

Nursing Workforce in Long-Term Care: 

Canada’s long term nursing care was affected seriously by the pandemic. The registered nurses made up the largest proportion of nurses working in this area. These nurses also had the highest proportion of part-time and casual workers compared with other nurses working in long term care. 

Conclusion:

During the pandemic, nurses have continued to provide care to patients despite being exhausted and at risk of infection. Even amidst the risk of infection, fear of transmitting the disease to family members and the loss of patients and colleagues, nurses did not give up. 

Although this negatively affected the mental health of nurses, it has also promoted their position as caregivers within the healthcare industry. Canada understands and acknowledges the work done by nurses even more than before, which led to better nursing education and employment opportunities. 

Reasons to Study Chronic Disease Management in Canada

 Chronic Disease Management is a field that is associated with the prevention of chronic diseases and managing the medical conditions that arise from thereon. These are medical challenges that are addressed by an active and ongoing relationship between the patient and a healthcare professional based on mutual trust, medical intervention, and respect.

Being the members of integrated and multidisciplinary healthcare teams, nurses have an important role to play in the prevention and management of chronic diseases. Hence, Chronic Disease Management is considered one of the best nursing courses in Canada that trains the nurses in addressing the challenges that come in the management of chronic diseases. 

Chronic Disease Management is widely chosen by nursing students for many reasons. Some of them are: 

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2. 1. Specialized Training: The Chronic Disease Management nursing study in Canada is meant to offer the nurses specialized training in the prevention and management of chronic diseases. Chronic diseases can impair daily physical and mental functions while reducing a person’s ability to perform normal activities. 

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Hence, chronic disease management is one of the best nursing courses that enable nurses to apply practical knowledge for creating patient care programs that solve chronic medical conditions. The graduates of this program are well equipped to treat patients who have chronic health conditions including diseases such as Cancer, Diabetes, Arthritis, Chronic Depression, etc. 

2. 2. Acquiring Advanced Skills: The nurses are trained to acquire the skills needed for managing a patient’s chronic conditions, plan a suitable intervention plan, educate a patient on a self-management plan and assess a patient’s condition on the outcome tools. 

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The nurses are able to develop effective prevention strategies, follow up, and support patients along with their families so managing chronic health conditions becomes easier. The nurses are essentially trained to acquire skills that help them to be well prepared for addressing the challenge of chronic disease management. 

3. 3. Job Opportunities: Canada has often made it clear that it needs qualified nurses. Keeping this in mind, it is quite evident that there are many lucrative job opportunities in Canada for Chronic Disease Management nurses and other healthcare professionals. 

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Therefore, when the nursing students successfully complete the Chronic Disease Management nursing study in Canada, there is a wide range of employers waiting for the students. They can find employment opportunities in acute care hospitals, long-term care facilities, and community health care centres. 

4. 4. Improving Patient Care: The field of Chronic Disease Management has become one of the largest and growing components of general practice and changing models of care have evolved since then. In this scenario, extending the role of nurses and adopting nurse-led models of care has offered beneficial effects on patient satisfaction, clinical outcomes, and quality of life. 

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Hence, by choosing the Chronic Disease Management nursing course in Canada, nurses can learn to manage routine maintenance and monitoring of patients who have chronic diseases. With evidence-based practice, they have an excellent opportunity to improve patient care to a remarkable level. 

Conclusion: 

Enrolling in a Chronic Disease Management nursing course with INSCOL enables a nurse to acquire comprehensive knowledge for managing the problems that come with chronic diseases. They get professional education and are trained to solve all challenges that might appear while caring for the patients.