AACN Essentials Paper

Daniella Sacca
MSU College of Nursing
NRSG 323: Professional Development 1: Professional and Ethical Nursing
Dr. Rebecca Rassi
November 30, 2023
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The profession of nursing was founded by Florence Nightingale based on the belief that

well-educated nurses could dramatically improve the care of sick patients by using informed

judgements (D’Antonio & Buhler-Wilkerson, 2023). A nurse’s main goal is to provide patient-

centered care that is individualized, holistic, respectful, compassionate, coordinated, evidence-

based and developmentally appropriate for the patient (AACN, 2021). This is what Domain 2 of

The Essentials: Core Competencies For Professional Nursing Education covers. This domain is

based on the core idea that person-centered care is the core purpose of nursing as a profession.

Person-centered care is defined as, “care [that] focuses on the individual within multiple

complicated contexts, including family and/or important others.” (AACN, 2021). This means that

as a nurse we are expected to understand our patients on an individual basis versus creating

generalized care-plans as a “one size fits all”. Patients are individual people and deserve to be

treated as such, which also means placing an emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion

(AACN, 2021).

A main competency of this domain is to engage with the individual in establishing a

caring relationship (AACN, 2021). This also includes fostering that caring relationship while

also establishing mutual respect for one another. Nursing school has helped me obtain this

competency by involving a multitude of case studies in which different circumstances were

evaluated and care plans were created based on an individual basis. The biggest project we had to

show that we have competency in this domain was our care plan map in NRSG 328: Foundations

Lab in which we were assigned a resident and asked to perform a Gordon’s health assessment.

After our assessment was completed, we were asked to create a care plan map that was

individualized to each of our residents. This was a great opportunity to apply person-centered

care in a clinical setting for the first. This also gave me the chance to demonstrate empathy and
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compassionate care while we were discussing more difficult subjects for my patient in order to

help her feel more comfortable.

Nursing is not just about one person care; it also encompasses population health.

Population health is the third domain in The Essentials: Core Competencies and is centered

around the definition of a population being, “a discrete group that the nurse and others care for

across settings at local, regional, national, and global levels.” (AACN, 2021). Population

healthcare includes any collaborative activities among relevant individuals involved in the care

to improve the health of the population. An example of this would be a school board and the

school nurses collaborating on a flu outbreak of the school population as an attempt to work

together to improve the health of the students (which is the population). In the domain of

Population Health, it is important to challenge any biases and barriers that may impact the health

outcomes of the population (AACN, 2021). Nurses’ responsibility is to be aware of their own

personal bias and recognize the barriers that may prevent a patient from receiving adequate care.

I challenged my own personal bias this semester during my clinical site hours for NRSG

334: Nursing Practice for Health Promotion Clinical in which my clinical site was the warming

center (HRDC). The warming center population is largely unhoused with a history of substance

abuse which led me to have some personal bias before even allowing myself to get to know the

residents. Throughout the semester I challenged my personal bias and continued to learn more

from the residents and talk about their experiences in healthcare. It was abundantly clear very

fast that these residents did not have access to the healthcare that they deserved, so my partner

and I created a brochure for the population that included locations of sliding-scale healthcare

services. We were able to define a target population, assess their health data and priorities and
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develop an action plan to meet the identified needs (AACN, 2021) which are subjects included

under this domain.

Nursing is not just a solo profession either; this career involves interprofessional

relationships that include a variety of team members. Interprofessional partnerships is Domain 6

in The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education and is defined as,

“intentional collaboration across professions and with care team members, patients, families,

communities and other stakeholders to optimize care, enhance the healthcare experience, and

strengthen outcomes” (AACN, 2021). Person-centered care requires a coordinated, integrated

and collaborative effort in order to give comprehensive care. Part of interprofessional

relationships involve communicating in a manner that facilitates a partnership that is dedicated to

quality care delivery (AACN, 2021). In order to deliver the quality care that nurses strive for, it

is important to apply team roles to facilitate effective team functioning.

This semester we worked on effective team functioning including delegating roles and

applying team leadership when necessary in our NRSG 400: Nursing Simulation course. We had

a multitude of simulations presented to us in which we were able to assign team roles beforehand

and practice delegating tasks to others in our group. It was also a great opportunity to practice

our SBAR communication tool while we simulated calling other professionals such as doctors or

lead nurses. The importance of fostering positive interprofessional partnerships is key in creating

person-centered care because patient care involves a multitude of professions and it is incredibly

important that interactions continue to be positive so that the quality of care is not diminished. I

feel as though I have a strong background in interprofessional partnerships thanks to not only the

simulation course we had this semester, but my background experience working with different

professions for one patient. How medical professions speak and interact with each other affects
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the quality of care for patients so my goal as a future nurse is to facilitate positive interactions as

much as possible.
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References

AACN Membership. (2021, April). The essentials: Competencies for professional nursing
education. aacnnursing.org.
https://www.aacnnursing.org/Portals/0/PDFs/Publications/Essentials-2021.pdf

D’Antonio, P., & Buhler-Wilkerson, K. (2023, October 27). Nursing: Medical Profession.
Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/nursing