Professionalism Glossary

Open Resources for Nursing (Open RN)

  • ABCs: Airway, breathing, and circulation.
  • Accountability: Being answerable to oneself and others for one’s own choices, decisions, and actions as measured against a standard.
  • Actual problems: Nursing problems currently occurring with the patient.
  • Acuity: The level of patient care that is required based on the severity of a patient’s illness or condition.
  • Acuity-rating staffing models: A staffing model used to make patient assignments that reflects the individualized nursing care required for different types of patients.
  • Acute conditions: Conditions having a sudden onset.
  • Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN): An RN who has a graduate degree and advanced knowledge. There are four categories of APRNs: certified nurse-midwife (CNM), clinical nurse specialist (CNS), certified nurse practitioner (CNP), or certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA). These nurses can diagnose illnesses and prescribe treatments and medications.[1] (Chapter 1.4)ANA Standards of Professional Nursing Practice: Authoritative statements of the duties that all registered nurses, regardless of role, population, or specialty, are expected to perform competently. The Standards of Professional Nursing Practice describe a competent level of nursing practice as demonstrated by the critical thinking model known as the nursing process. The nursing process includes the components of assessment, diagnosis, outcomes identification, planning, implementation, and evaluation.[2] (Chapter 1.3)
    ANA Standards of Professional Performance: Standards that describe a competent level of behavior in the professional role of the nurse, including activities related to ethics, advocacy, respectful and equitable practice, communication, collaboration, leadership, education, scholarly inquiry, quality of practice, professional practice evaluation, resource stewardship, and environmental health.[3] (Chapter 1.3)
    Assignment: Routine care, activities, and procedures that are within the authorized scope of practice of the RN, LPN/VN, or routine functions of the assistive personnel.
    Assistive Personnel (AP): Any assistive personnel (formerly referred to as ‘‘unlicensed” assistive personnel [UAP]) trained to function in a supportive role, regardless of title, to whom a nursing responsibility may be delegated. This includes, but is not limited to, certified nursing assistants or aides (CNAs), patient-care technicians (PCTs), certified medical assistants (CMAs), certified medication aides, and home health aides.[4]
  • Basic nursing care: Care that can be performed following a defined nursing procedure with minimal modification in which the responses of the patient to the nursing care are predictable.[5] (Chapter 1.4)
  • Board of Nursing: The state-specific licensing and regulatory body that sets the standards for safe nursing care, decides the scope of practice for nurses within its jurisdiction, and issues licenses to qualified candidates. (Chapter 1.3)
  • Certification: The formal recognition of specialized knowledge, skills, and experience demonstrated by the achievement of standards identified by a nursing specialty. (Chapter 1.4)
  • Chain of command: A hierarchy of reporting relationships in an agency that establishes accountability and lays out lines of authority and decision-making power. (Chapter 1.4)
  • Chronic conditions: Conditions that have a slow onset and may gradually worsen over time.
  • Clinical reasoning: “A complex cognitive process that uses formal and informal thinking strategies to gather and analyze patient information, evaluate the significance of this information, and weigh alternative actions.”[6]
  • Closed-loop communication: A process that enables the person giving the instructions to hear what they said reflected back and to confirm that their message was, in fact, received correctly.
  • Code of ethics: A code that applies normative, moral guidance for nurses in terms of what they ought to do, be, and seek. A code of ethics makes the primary obligations, values, and ideals of a profession explicit. (Chapter 1.6)
  • Constructive feedback: Supportive feedback that offers solutions to areas of weakness.
  • Critical thinking: A broad term used in nursing that includes “reasoning about clinical issues such as teamwork, collaboration, and streamlining workflow.”[7]
  • CURE hierarchy: A strategy for prioritization based on identifying “critical” needs, “urgent” needs, “routine” needs, and “extras.”
  • Data cues: Pieces of significant clinical information that direct the nurse toward a potential clinical concern or a change in condition.
  • Delegated responsibility: A nursing activity, skill, or procedure that is transferred from a license nurse to a delegatee.
  • Delegatee: An RN, LPN/VN, or AP who is delegated a nursing responsibility by either an APRN, RN, or LPN/VN who is competent to perform the task and verbally accepts the responsibility.
  • Delegation: Allowing a delegatee to perform a specific nursing activity, skill, or procedure that is beyond the delegatee’s traditional role but in which they have received additional training.
  • Delegator: An APRN, RN, or LPN/VN who requests a specially trained delegatee to perform a specific nursing activity, skill, or procedure that is beyond the delegatee’s traditional role.
  • Dysphagia: Impaired swallowing. (Chapter 1.4)
  • Ethical principle: An ethical principle is a general guide, basic truth, or assumption that can be used with clinical judgment to determine a course of action. Four common ethical principles are beneficence (do good), nonmaleficence (do no harm), autonomy (control by the individual), and justice (fairness). (Chapter 1.6)
  • Evidence-based practice: A lifelong problem-solving approach that integrates the best evidence from well-designed research studies and evidence-based theories; clinical expertise and evidence from assessment of the health consumer’s history and condition, as well as health care resources; and client, family, group, community, and population preferences and values.[8] (Chapter 1.8)
  • Expected conditions: Conditions that are likely to occur or anticipated in the course of an illness, disease, or injury.
  • Expressive aphasia: The impaired ability to form words and speak. (Chapter 1.4)
  • Five rights of delegation: Right task, right circumstance, right person, right directions and communication, and right supervision and evaluation.
  • Licensed Practical Nurse/Vocational Nurse (LPN/LVN): An individual who has completed a state-approved practical or vocational nursing program, passed the NCLEX-PN examination, and is licensed by their state Board of Nursing to provide client care.[9] (Chapter 1.4, Chapter 1.5)
  • Malpractice: A specific term that looks at a standard of care, as well as the professional status of the caregiver.[10] (Chapter 1.6)
  • Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Prioritization strategies often reflect the foundational elements of physiological needs and safety and progress toward higher levels.
  • Morality: Personal values, character, or conduct of individuals within communities and societies.[11] (Chapter 1.6)
  • Negligence: A “general term that denotes conduct lacking in due care, carelessness, and a deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would use in a particular set of circumstances.”[12] (Chapter 1.6)
  • Nurse Licensure Compact (NLC): Allows a nurse to have one multistate license with the ability to practice in the home state and other compact states. (Chapter 1.5)
  • Nurse Practice Act (NPA): Legislation enacted by each state that establishes regulations for nursing practice within that state by defining the requirements for licensure, as well as the scope of nursing practice. (Chapter 1.3)
  • Nursing team members: Advanced practice registered nurses (APRN), registered nurses (RN), licensed practical/vocational nurses (LPN/VN), and assistive personnel (AP).
  • Nursing: Nursing integrates the art and science of caring and focused on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and human functioning; prevention of illness and injury; facilitation of healing; and alleviation of suffering through compassionate presence. Nursing is the diagnosis and treatment of human responses and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, groups, communities, and populations in recognition of the connection of all humanity.[13] (Chapter 1.3)
  • Patient confidentiality: Keeping your client’s Protected Health Information (PHI) protected and known only by those health care team members directly providing care for the client. (Chapter 1.6)
  • Primary care: Care that is provided to clients to promote wellness and prevent disease from occurring. This includes health promotion, education, protection (such as immunizations), early disease screening, and environmental considerations. (Chapter 1.4)
  • Protocol: A precise and detailed written plan for a regimen of therapy.[14] (Chapter 1.3)
  • Provider: A physician, podiatrist, dentist, optometrist, or advanced practice nurse provider.[15] (Chapter 1.4)
  • Quality improvement: Combined and unceasing efforts of everyone–healthcare professionals, clients and their families, researchers, payers, planners and educators–to make the changes that will lead to better client outcomes (health), better system performance (care) and better professional development (learning). (Chapter 1.8)
  • Quality: The degree to which nursing services for health care consumers, families, groups, communities, and populations increase the likelihood of desirable outcomes and are consistent with evolving nursing knowledge.”[16] (Chapter 1.8)
  • Ratio-based staffing models: A staffing model used to make patient assignments in terms of one nurse caring for a set number of patients.
  • Registered Nurse (RN): An individual who has graduated from a state-approved school of nursing, passed the NCLEX-RN examination, and is licensed by a state board of nursing to provide client care.[17] (Chapter 1.4, Chapter 1.5)
  • Risk problem: A nursing problem that reflects that a patient may experience a problem but does not currently have signs reflecting the problem is actively occurring.
  • Safety culture: A culture established within health care agencies that empowers nurses, nursing students, and other staff members to speak up about risks to clients and to report errors and near misses, all of which drive improvement in client care and reduce the incident of client harm. (Chapter 1.3)
  • Scope of practice: Procedures, actions, and processes that a health care practitioner is permitted to undertake in keeping with the terms of their professional license.
  • Scope of practice: Services that a qualified health professional is deemed competent to perform and permitted to undertake – in keeping with the terms of their professional license. (Chapter 1.1)
  • Secondary care: Care that occurs when a person has contracted an illness or injury and is in need of medical care. (Chapter 1.4)
  • Tertiary care: A type of care that deals with the long-term effects from chronic illness or condition, with the purpose to restore physical and mental function that may have been lost. The goal is to achieve the highest level of functioning possible with this chronic illness. (Chapter 1.4)
  • Time estimation: A prioritization strategy including the review of planned tasks and allocation of time believed to be required to complete each task.
  • Time scarcity: A feeling of racing against a clock that is continually working against you.
  • Unexpected conditions: Conditions that are not likely to occur in the normal progression of an illness, disease, or injury.
  • Unlicensed Assistive Personnel (UAP): Any unlicensed person, regardless of title, who performs tasks delegated by a nurse. This includes certified nursing aides/assistants (CNAs), patient care assistants (PCAs), patient care technicians (PCTs), state tested nursing assistants (STNAs), nursing assistants-registered (NA/Rs) or certified medication aides/assistants (MA-Cs). Certification of UAPs varies between jurisdictions.[18] (Chapter 1.4)

 

  1. NCSBN. https://www.ncsbn.org/index.htm ↵
  2. American Nurses Association. (2021). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (4th ed.). American Nurses Association. ↵
  3. American Nurses Association. (2021). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (4th ed.). American Nurses Association. ↵
  4. American Nurses Association and NCSBN. (2019). National guidelines for nursing delegation. https://www.ncsbn.org/NGND-PosPaper_06.pdf ↵
  5. Wisconsin Administrative Code. (2018). Chapter N 6 standards of practice for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses. https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/code/admin_code/n/6.pdf ↵
  6. Klenke-Borgmann, L., Cantrell, M. A., & Mariani, B. (2020). Nurse educator’s guide to clinical judgment: A review of conceptualization, measurement, and development. Nursing Education Perspectives, 41(4), 215-221. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.nep.0000000000000669 ↵
  7. Klenke-Borgmann, L., Cantrell, M. A., & Mariani, B. (2020). Nurse educator’s guide to clinical judgment: A review of conceptualization, measurement, and development. Nursing Education Perspectives, 41(4), 215-221. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.nep.0000000000000669 ↵
  8. American Nurses Association. (2021). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (4th ed.). American Nurses Association. ↵
  9. NCSBN. https://www.ncsbn.org/index.htm ↵
  10. Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services. (n.d.). Negligence and malpractice. https://health.mo.gov/living/lpha/phnursing/negligence.php#:~:text=Negligence%20is%3A,a%20particular%20set%20of%20circumstances. ↵
  11. American Nurses Association. (2015). Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements. American Nurses Association. https://www.nursingworld.org/practice-policy/nursing-excellence/ethics/code-of-ethics-for-nurses/coe-view-only/ ↵
  12. Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services. (n.d.). Negligence and malpractice. https://health.mo.gov/living/lpha/phnursing/negligence.php#:~:text=Negligence%20is%3A,a%20particular%20set%20of%20circumstances. ↵
  13. American Nurses Association. (2021). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (4th ed.). American Nurses Association. ↵
  14. Wisconsin Administrative Code. (2018). Chapter N 6 standards of practice for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses. https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/code/admin_code/n/6.pdf ↵
  15. Wisconsin Administrative Code. (2018). Chapter N 6 standards of practice for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses. https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/code/admin_code/n/6.pdf ↵
  16. American Nurses Association. (2021). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (4th ed.). American Nurses Association. ↵
  17. NCSBN. https://www.ncsbn.org/index.htm ↵
  18. NCSBN. https://www.ncsbn.org/index.htm ↵

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