Photo By Rebecca Perron | 181107-N-GM597-015 Portsmouth, Va. (Nov. 7, 2018) Medical-surgical nurses at Naval...... read more read more
The medical-surgical nursing staff at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (NMCP) marked Medical-Surgical Nurses Week by gathering Nov. 7 to celebrate the care they provide and discuss opportunities for additional nursing certifications. The celebration concluded with a cake cutting by the medical-surgical nursing specialty leader for Navy Medicine, and the most junior and senior medical-surgical nurses present.
Medical-surgical nursing is the single largest nursing specialty in the United States. Registered nurses in this specialty practice primarily on hospital units and care for adult patients who are acutely ill with a wide variety of medical problems and diseases or who are recovering from surgery.
There are 768 active-duty Navy Nurse Corps officers who are designated medical-surgical nurses – 150 of them are assigned to NMCP. Dozens more civilian and contract medical-surgical nurses provide care for NMCP’s patients.
The units that are considered medical-surgical include Post-Anesthesia Care Unit, Progressive Care Unit, Post-Partum and the inpatient surgical, medicine and oncology wards. Many of the outpatient clinics also have medical-surgical nurses assigned to them.
During the celebration, nursing leadership spoke about the importance of the care that NMCP’s medical-surgical nurses provide.
“Our medical-surgical staff focuses every day on caring compassionately for patients and our families,” said Cmdr. Cassandra Leate, Medical-Surgical Department head. “We possess a specialized skillset and we are knowledgeable of this whole spectrum of nursing care. We make a difference by building our profession and the medical-surgical specialty through mentoring and nurturing each other, advocating for our patients and our families, and serving our community through education, care and improving patient care.”
Before the ceremony, Leate had asked staff to tell her what they like most about medical-surgical nursing. Leate read part of a statement from Ensign Marla Miller-Chong.
“‘Medical-surgical nursing teaches us how to become a knowledgeable and competent nurse, allowing us to be versatile and flexible when facing diverse settings,’” Leate read, then continued with her own comments. “When you look across our department, we have diversity here. We have orthopedics, general surgery, general medicine, hematology/oncology and anything in between. We are celebrating our diversity and what we do every day.”
“Medical-surgical nursing for a lot of people is considered a baseline skillset, however, we are a profession because we are so diverse,” said Lt. Cmdr. Aleah McHenry, medical-surgical nursing specialty leader for Navy Medicine. “All of those critical thinking skills and how diverse we are is what makes us special. We don’t have one path – we have multiple paths that we could follow – and I think that makes medical-surgical nursing unique.”
Certification first requires an accredited nursing degree or a bachelor of science in nursing followed by two years – which is generally 1,000 hours – as a practicing nurse before being eligible to become certified. There are multiple areas where a nurse can be certified, and includes orthopedics, post-anesthesia, two medical-surgical general certifications, and oncology.
According to McHenry, nurses who are certified are more confident in providing care, and they are better leaders in nursing.
“Those two things alone are worth elevating those staff who are certified and to encourage staff to be certified,” McHenry said. “Our outpatient clinics also have medical-surgical nurses, such as internal medicine, urology, rheumatology, gastroenterology – for military we have medical-surgical nurses assigned there – as well as nurses who are assigned at the branch health clinics. This helps us identify those who are qualified when called to deploy. That helps us maintain our readiness when we are asked to deploy.”
| Date Taken: | 11.07.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 11.08.2018 11:40 |
| Story ID: | 299237 |
| Location: | PORTSMOUTH, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 158 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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