Professional Portfolio Part 1

Sample Answer

Professional Portfolio

Nurses play an important role in providing care that meets the needs of diverse populations. It is therefore important that they develop goals that guide their professional practice. They also need to understand their strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities that can be explored for their continued professional development.

Therefore, this essay explores my professional goals, its relation to Miller’s Wheel of Professionalism, strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities for professional growth.

Goals

One of my goals as a professional nurse, which should be achieved within the next three to five years is focusing on continued education. According to the nursing philosophy, nurses should strive to advance their professional status through continued education. Continued education is important is enables nurses to possess the skills as well as knowledge needed to provide optimum care to their populations.

It also enables them become updated on new aspects of care that should be incorporated into their plans to enhance safety, quality, and efficiency of care. Therefore, I intend to advance my level of education to the master’s level for me to become a nurse practitioner within the next three to five years.

My second professional goal is to enhance my skills in using technologies utilized in nursing and healthcare. The practice of nursing in the modern world relies mainly on the use of different technologies to enhance the safety, efficiency, and quality of care. It is therefore important for the nurses and other healthcare providers to explore the ways in which the available health technologies can be optimized to enhance the quality of care.

They should also aim at acquiring new knowledge and skills that are essential in troubleshooting issues related to health technologies. Consequently, I will focus on improving my technological understanding as a way of improving the quality of care to the patients I will interact with in the clinical setting.

My last professional goal is to horn my research-related skills in nursing within the next three years. Nursing research is an important element that contributes to evidence-based practice. Nurses should possess the research skills that are needed in contributing to the development of evidence-based data in their practice.

They should utilize their knowledge in research to question practice and ways in which they can be improved for the realization of the desired patient outcomes. Therefore, I believe that research skills are essential for evidence-based practice in nursing.

Miller’s Wheel of Professionalism

One of the areas that relate to my professional goals in the Miller’s Wheel of professionalism is research, development, use and evaluation. According to Miller, research is an essential component of nursing. Nurses utilize evidence from research in their decision-making. They use it to critique the available evidence on caring patients from diverse backgrounds, hence, forming the basis of evidence-based practice (Tanaka et al., 2015).

This area of professionalism in Miller’s wheel relates to my goal of developing my knowledge and skills in research. I intend to ensure that I have the knowledge and skills to determine the best available clinical evidence that I can use to optimize the outcomes of care that I give to my patients.

The other area of my professional goals that relate to Miller’s wheel of professionalism is continuing education competence. According to Miller, nurses should engage in activities that contribute to their educational development and advancement. Continued education is important since it enables nurses to develop new knowledge as well as skills that are needed in their practice.

They also become updated on the new approaches to nursing that inform their practice and caring of patients from diverse backgrounds (De Braganca & Nirmala, 2017). This area of the Miller’s wheel relates to my professional goal of advancing my education to become a nurse practitioner.

How to Accomplish Goals

I will engage in a number of activities to achieve the above goals. One of them will be enrolling for a master’s degree in an area of specialization in nursing to become a nurse practitioner. I will specialize in an area of my interest as a way of strengthening my skills and knowledge in handling the health problems affecting the population of focus.

I will also enroll in educational programs that aim at advancing my professional knowledge and skills. This will include attending training and seminars on new aspects related to nursing practice. I will also enroll for training on nursing research to build my skills in nursing. I will read extensively on issues related to nursing research and their application to practice to strengthen my knowledge and skills in nursing.

I will also read more on upcoming medical technologies related to nursing and their use as a way of becoming knowledgeable on their use. I will also seek to work with experts in the field to build my knowledge and skills on nursing research and use of different healthcare technologies.

Strengths

One of my strengths is that I am good in time management. I can handle different tasks in a timely manner. I achieve this by allocating time to each task that I am assigned to undertake in my personal and professional life. This strength will enable me to plan well towards achieving my goal of advancing my education while working in my future area of employment. My other strength is the ability to work with individuals from diverse backgrounds.

I can easily understand the needs, values, perceptions, and experiences of individuals that I work with in my practice. This implies that I can adapt easily to working environment where people from diverse backgrounds work together. Therefore, I will use this strength to work with others in achieving my goals on educational advancement, research, and use of new technologies.

Weaknesses

One of my weaknesses is that I tend to focus on perfection. I am at ensuring that the things that I engage in are done to the desired perfection. Perfection is an area of my weakness since I at times spend too much time in a given task, thereby, weakening my efficiency in completing some tasks. My other weakness is my desire to do everything at once.

This is an area of weakness since most of the things in the clinical area cannot be done at once. Prioritization is used to determine the things that should be done first to meet the needs of the clients.

Opportunities

One of the opportunities that I have is the acute shortage of nurses in the US. The shortage implies that there is a high demand for graduate nurses to provide the care needed by the diverse populations. It also implies that there exist significant benefits associated with advancing my career as a nurse. Therefore, I will focus on ensuring that I achieve my goals to optimize this opportunity in the current healthcare system in America.

Threats

One of my threats is the fact that I have low skills on the use of most of the modern healthcare technologies. My low skills and knowledge on this area implies that I might not be able to utilize optimally health technologies to promote health and wellbeing of the patients. Therefore, I will focus on strengthening my knowledge and skills in the use of health technologies in nursing. Through it, I will improve my knowledge and skills in this area of my professional practice.

Conclusion

In summary, my professional goals include continued educational development, advancing my knowledge and skills in technology use and horning my nursing research skills. The goals align with areas of professional development stated by Miller. Therefore, I will focus on my strengths and optimize opportunities in my profession to overcome the threats to my professional growth. I will also focus on identifying new areas of strengths that will enable me to achieve my professional goals.

References

• De Braganca, A., & Nirmala, R. (2017). Professionalism among nurses A concept analysis. Journal of Business and Management Invention, 6(7), 60-66.
• Tanaka, M., Taketomi, K., Yonemitsu, Y., & Kawamoto, R. (2015). An international comparison of professional behaviors among nurse leaders in the USA and Japan. International Journal of Nursing & Clinical Practices, 2015.