VOICES OF THE SON:
WHAT DOES IS MEAN TO BE A NURSE?

Keira Wickliffe, MSN/MPH student

Everyone’s definition of a nurse is different depending on whom you speak with, nurses them selves are having trouble defining what they are. If nurses are to be able to advocate for themselves, there needs to be a common statement of what a nurse is. Unbeknown to many, there is a statement that defines what values a nurse should practice under. This is the American Nursing Association's Code of Ethics that majority of nurses do not seem to know exist, and if they know that it exists, what it includes is a mystery. 

The Code of Ethics is a statement that should be used to define a nurse’s set values that one is to practice under. It can be compared to the medical student’s Hippocratic Oath that defines the values that as a doctor they must practice under. It, along with evidence based practice, gives nurses a strong platform to stand on when they need it.  How can nurses practice these values if many don’t know this Code even exists? Can this oath unite nursing to a more unified group?

Nursing has been full of traditions since the time of Florence Nightingale. There have been ceremonies with the white nursing caps, and later pinning ceremonies. As nursing is changing and trying to define its place in the world, so are these ceremonies. The symbols of a long tradition that nurses should be proud of, have been disappearing.  The ceremonies that have been taken place aren’t identical ceremonies throughout the nursing schools. Nursing must not allow it’s past to slip away, for Florence Nightingale’s teachings still hold very true if not more so in today’s world.

There is a way that we could keep some of these important symbolic traditions but add to it something that would give definition to unity towards the nursing field. If a ceremony could be created where the Code of Ethics is including, nursing would have something to stand behind. Every nurse who graduated a nursing program and went through there ceremony would know exactly what they stand for as a nurse. Or there is another option, much like the medical students who have their white coat ceremony where they have to take the Hippocratic Oath before they start their first day of class, could the nursing field come up with their own ceremony where nursing students must state the Code of Ethics.

Nursing students will then know what they are to uphold and strive towards throughout their nursing learning experience and be able to take knowledge with them when they become a practicing nurse. Knowing the Code of Ethics at the beginning of and through out their learning experience might shed some light onto the nursing experience and issues that nurses face in today’s world.  As nurses are educated on the Code of Ethics, maybe then, nursing will have a unified front.