Skills Used in the Nursing Process

Nurses are an essential part of the health-care profession. While doctors diagnose medical conditions and set courses of treatment, it's the nurses that interact with patients regularly, helping them recuperate by administering medications and offering reassurance and personal assistance. Because nurses do so much for patients, they need to have a broad yet specialized set of skills.

Interpersonal Communication

• Nurses need to communicate with patients and their families on a regular basis to inform them about what medications or medical procedures have been prescribed to them, and educate them about how those medications or procedures will be administered and whether there are any possible risks or side effects. Nurses must be able to communicate these things clearly, but they must be good listeners as well. They have to be able to listen to patients' concerns regarding their care and relate those to the doctor overseeing those patients' care. And they must listen when patients report on their condition and describe new symptoms, as nurses are responsible for relaying that information too.

Medical Training

• Nurses, depending on their titles and levels of education, have varying degrees of medical training, and their level of training will correspond with the medical tasks they perform. For instance, a registered nurse may administer medications, draw blood and be called upon to assist in life-threatening situations such as when a patient goes into cardiac arrest. This requires a deep knowledge of anatomy, biology and chemistry. However, a nursing assistant, who needs less education to work as a nurse, may only be able to assist patients with daily care issues such as redressing wounds, taking a temperature and getting vital signs.

Decision Making

• Nurses must make decisions that impact patients' lives on a daily basis. They make small decisions, such as whether a patient needs more pain medications, and they make big decisions, such as how to respond when a patient has an adverse reaction to a medication. Some of the decisions that nurses make are life and death decisions. Visit a hospital ward, and you'll notice that it's the nurses that are always visible. That means that when something happens that requires an immediate medical response, it's the nurses who are first on the scene to deliver life-saving medications and medical procedures.