ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF NURSES

Nurses assume several roles when providing care to clients. The role of
modern nursing has expanded to include a heightened emphasis on illness
prevention, health promotion, and concern for the client’s holism. These roles are
not exclusive of one another but rather carried out concurrently.

1. Caregiver

The nurse addresses the client’s holistic care needs to promote health and
the healing process while preserving the client’s dignity. Care giving
encompasses the physical, psychosocial, developmental, cultural, and spiritual
levels. Nursing actions may involve:
a. full care - for completely dependent client
b. partial care – for partially dependent client
c. supportive-educative care – when assisting clients to attain their highest
possible level of health and wellness

2. Communicator

Nurses communicate with clients, support persons, other health

professionals, and people in the community. The nurse must be able to
communicate clearly and accurately to meet client’s health care needs.
Identified client problems should be communicated verbally or in writing to other
members of the health team.

3. Teacher

The nurse provides clients and family members with information about
health, treatment, or therapy, and lifestyle changes. The nurse determines the
client’s learning needs and readiness to learn, sets specific nursing learning
goals in conjunction with the client, enacts teaching strategies that are
compatible with the client’s knowledge, education, and literacy levels and then
measures learning. He/She also shares her expertise with other health care
team members.

4. Client Advocate

An advocate is one who expresses and defends the cause of another. In

the role of client advocate, the nurse informs clients about their rights and
provides them with the information they need to make informed decisions.
He/she assists clients in expressing their rights whenever necessary. The
nurse also works to preserve client’s legal and human rights in times of health
and illness, and during the process of dying. When a nurse relays to other
health professional such as the physician, the concerns or wishes of the client,
she acts as a client advocate.

5. Counselor

Counseling is the process of helping a client to recognize and cope with

stressful psychologic or social problems, to develop improved interpersonal
relationships and to promote personal growth. The nurse counsels primarily to
healthy individuals with normal adjustment difficulties, focusing on helping the
person develop new attitudes, feelings, and behaviors, recognize the choices,
and develop a sense of control.

6. Change Agent

Change is an integral aspect of nursing and nurses initiate, motivate, and

implement change. The nurse acts as a change agent when assisting clients
to make modifications in their behavior. The nurse also often acts to make
changes in a system, such as in clinical care and other nursing area.
 The PDCA Model – It is an improvement cycle based on the scientific
method of proposing a change in a process, implementing the change,
measuring the results, and taking appropriate action. Also known as the
Deming Cycle or Deming Wheel (Lean Enterprise Institute, No Date).

a. Plan: Recognize an opportunity and plan a change.

b. Do: Test the change. Carry out a small-scale study.
c. Check: Review the test, analyze the results, and identify what you’ve
learned.
d. Act: Take action based on what you learned in the study step. If the
change did not work, go through the cycle again with a different plan. If
you were successful, incorporate what you learned from the test into
wider changes. Use what you learned to plan new improvements,
beginning the cycle again.

7. Leader

A leader influences others to work together to accomplish a specific goal.

Leaders usually have outstanding interpersonal skills and are excellent
listeners and communicators. They have initiative and the ability and
confidence to innovate change, motivate, facilitate, and mentor others.
Nurses employ the leader role at different levels: individual client, family,
groups of clients, colleagues, or the community.

8. Manager

A manager is an employee of an organization who is given authority, power,

and responsibility for planning, organizing, coordinating, and directing the work
of others, and for establishing and evaluating standards. They control human,
financial, and material resources. They set goals, make decisions, and solve
problems. They initiate and implement change.
Nurses as managers, are responsible for the management and coordination
of client care. All nurses need good management skills, whether they supervise
others in the provision of nursing care or whether they provide direct care
themselves. Additionally, nurse managers may provide day-to-day coaching or
serve as a mentor or preceptor.

9. Case manager

Nurse case managers work with the multidisciplinary health care team to
measure the effectiveness of the case management plan and to monitor
outcomes. The role of the nurse case manager may vary depending on the
specified role where the nurse works. For instance, the case manager works
with the staff nurses to oversee the care of a specific caseload.

10. Research consumer

Nursing research provides the evolving body of knowledge and theory for
the profession. 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 issues related to protecting the rights of human
subjects, (c) participate in the identification of significant researchable
problems, and (d) be a discriminating consumer of research findings.

11. Expanded career roles

Expanded career roles allow greater independence and autonomy.
a. Nurse practitioner
i. employed in health care agencies or community-based
settings
Ex: adult nurse practitioner
school nurse practitioner
gerontology nurse practitioner
b. Clinical nurse specialist
i. has an advanced degree or expertise and is considered to be an
expert in a specialized area of practice
ii. ex: oncology nurse
c. Nurse anesthetist
d. Nurse midwife
e. Nurse researcher
f. Nurse administrator
g. Nurse educator
h. Nurse entrepreneur
i. usually has an advanced degree and manages a health-
related business