Is Nursing A Profession

Professional qualities of occupational health nursing

Maintaining professional standards is key to the state of occupational health nursing and its impact across industry, argues Greta Thornbory, occupational health and education consultant.

The renowned occupational health nurse Ruth Alston once refused to validate the Royal College of Nursing occupational health course I taught in the early 1990s until the college agreed to send me on a teacher training course. Needless to say I was signed up on the next course at Surrey University. It was probably the most worthwhile and interesting course of my whole career.

Maybe this was because it was the first time that I was on a multidisciplinary course. The person sitting next to me in the lecture theatre could be a dancer, saxophone player, mathematics graduate or an engineer. I started to see the outside world beyond nursing. It was on this course that my interest in professionalism was aroused, mainly by the work of Professor Peter Jarvis .

But what does professionalism actually mean? When checking various text books, dictionaries and, of course, Google and Wikipedia, the following definitions were presented to me:

Obviously then, the professional person has a lot to live up to. But who exactly is a professional person? What makes us professional? What is a profession and is nursing a profession?

Qualities of professionalism

We talk about professional sportsmen, but are they actually professionals? We all know the typical characteristics of a professional footballer as they are generally plastered all over the red-top newspapers.

But they are deemed to be professionals because they are paid, as opposed to the amateur sportsperson who does it as a hobby, "amateur" coming from the Latin - to love. This distinction between paid and unpaid work applies to many sports and across the arts.

There are professions that are regarded as the "traditional professions". These are divinity, medicine and law, but do they fulfil the criteria for a profession?

Let us look at what are regarded as the criteria for a profession and how the traditional professions and nursing fulfil these. I have gleaned that the following five criteria are required for a profession:

Taking each of these criteria in turn, is nursing - occupational health nursing in particular - really a profession?

Is it based on a body of knowledge?

Divinity: I hope I am not going to insult or upset anybody by questioning the body of knowledge of this "profession".

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I’d really be happy just to GET IN the program I’m trying to! I’ve applied twice, first with a 91.5% average, then after upgrading to an average of 95.74%. Seems everytime I apply the required % to get in goes up. First time it was 93%, and then jumped up to 96%. I keep trying, but damn.. it seems to need be a superhero to get into this program (at least to the school I’m trying to get into).

There are some fairly good responses here, some misinformed. 18 year RN here following a career change. The stats were this: 40 began in our class. 18 graduated. Some of these were life events… sickness, family breakups, etc. The majority were dropping below a 75 in a nursing class. Nursing school is a “program.” “Programs” are typically much more difficult than just a degree, or at least in our case it was. Intelligence and integrity weighs more than school attended.

There are some fairly good responses here, some misinformed. 18 year RN here following a career change. The stats were this: 40 began in our class. 18 graduated. Some of these were life events… sickness, family breakups, etc. The majority were dropping below a 75 in a nursing class. Nursing school is a “program.” “Programs” are typically much more difficult than just a degree, or at least in our case it was. Intelligence and integrity weighs more than school attended to your employer.

@PanAzreal Right now I am looking into Lexington KY. They built a new hospital and sent a postcard to a lot of people I know in Ohio about new job openings. There are only two nursing programs in Lexington KY which is University of Kentucky and a two college. Population wise Lexington is about the same size as my city which is about 2 million people. However my city has 10 times as many nursing schools. I enrolled into a MSN program at my University for family nurse practice start in the fall.

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