Being a Nurse – More Than Just Tasks

Within Canada, nurses' scope of practice is varied between jurisdictions, often poorly understood and way too often defined on the basis of tasks. Nurse leaders generally recognize that defining the practice of nurses solely on the basis of tasks only serves to devalue the critical thinking and evidence-base of the profession. But nurses themselves have also frequently fallen into the trap of delineating their practice in terms of tasks and time. An unfortunate outcome of this task orientation is a lack of appreciation for the full breadth of nurses' knowledge and scope of practice capabilities. In the extreme, (as I recently read in a letter to the editor) this leads to the conclusion that one doesn't need a university education to be a nurse - hospital-based training schools did the job just fine.