Roles and Functions of the Nurse

Ms Phina TOUCH, NICU nurse/Cambodia;

Nurses assume a number of roles when they provide care to clients. Nurses often carry out these roles concurrently, not exclusively of one another. For example, nurse may act as a counselor while providing physical care and teaching aspects of that care. The roles required at a specific time depend on the needs of the client and aspects of the particular environment. 
The following are the roles and functions of nurse:

Caregiver

The caregiver role has traditionally included those activities that assist the client physically and psychologically while preserving the clients’ dignity. The required nursing actions may involve full care for the completely dependent client, partial care the partially dependent client, and supportive-educative care to assist clients attaining their highest possible level of health and wellness. Caregiving encompasses the physical, psychological, developmental, cultural, and spiritual levels. The nursing process provides nurses with a framework for providing care. A nurse may provide care directly or delegate it to other caregivers.

Communicator

Communication is integral to all nursing roles. Nurses communicate with clients, support persons, and other health professionals, and people in the community. In the role of communicator, nurses identify client problems and communicate these verbally or in writing to other members of the health care team. The quality of the nurse’s communication is an important factor in nursing care. The nurse must be able to communicate clearly and accurately in order for a client’s health care needs to be met.

Teacher

As a teacher, nurse helps clients learn about their health and health care procedure they need to perform to restore or maintain their health. The nurse assesse clients’ learning needs and readiness to learn, sets specific learning goals, in conjunction with the client, enacts teaching strategies, measures learning. Nurses also teach unlicensed assistive personnel (UAP) to whom they delegate care, and they share their expertise with other nurses and health professionals.

Client advocate

A client advocate acts to protect the client. In this role, the nurse may represent the clients’ needs and wishes to other health professionals, such as replaying the clients’ request for information to the healthcare provider. They also assist clients in exercising their rights and help them speak up for themselves.

Counselor

Counseling is a process of helping a client to recognize and cope with stressful psychological or social problems, to develop improved interpersonal relationships, and to promote growth. It involves providing emotional, intellectual, and psychological support. The nurse counsels primarily healthy individuals with normal adjustment difficulties and focuses on helping the person develop new altitudes, feelings, and behaviors by encouraging the client to look at alternative behaviors, recognize the choices, and develop a sense of control.

Change Agent

The nurse acts as a change agent when assisting clients to make modifications in their behavior. Nurses often act to make change in a system, such as clinical care, if it is not helping a client return to health. Nurses are continually dealing with change in the health care system.

Leader

The leader influences others to work together to accomplish a specific goal. The leader role can be employed at different levels: individual client, family, groups of clients, colleagues, or the community. Effective leader is a learned process requiring an understanding of the needs and goals that motivate people, the knowledge to apply the leadership skills, and the interpersonal skills to influence others.

Manager

The nurse manages the nursing care of individuals, families, and communities. The nurse manager also delegates nursing activities to ancillary workers and other nurses, and supervises and evaluates their performance. Managing requires knowledge about organizational structure and dynamics, authority and accountability, leadership, change theory, advocacy, delegation, and supervision and evaluation.

Research consumer

Nurses often use research to improve client care. In a clinical area, nurses need to a) have some awareness of the process and language of research, b) be sensitive to issue related to protecting the rights of human subjects, c) participate in the identification of significant researchable problems, and d) be discriminating consumer of research findings.

Expended career roles

Nurses are fulfilling expanded career roles, such as those of NP, clinical nurse specialist, nurse midwife, nurse educator, nurse researcher, nurse administrator, and nurse anesthetist, all of which allow greater independence and autonomy.