Group Roles and the Nursing Process

The learning process in health care had revolutionized through time. Consequently, electronic communication and data storage have become critical in health care. Nursing education has been in demand for the past years and increasing dynamically in this aging world. Thus, the proper training and attitude must be inculcated from nursing students to registered nurses. Under nursing guidelines, there are six recognized phases of the nursing process. These are data collection or assessment, diagnosis, identification of goals or desired outcomes, planning of interventions, implementation of treatment and care, and evaluation. Each step is important to be accomplished accurately and properly since we’re dealing with human health, a human life. Each of these phases usually has additional steps. For example, diagnosis implies interpreting data, relating data to other data, formulating hypotheses, determining additional data needed to test hypotheses, and so on. The data collection or assessment is the systematic gathering of information about the strengths and weaknesses of the patient. These include objective and subjective data. The objective data are the ones observed by the nurse herself while subjective data are those observed by the patient or his relatives and friends. The nursing diagnosis is the description of the patient’s health status, which contains the etiology and defining characteristics of the patient’s disease. In identification of goals or outcomes, it must be patient-centered, realistic, specific and measurable even in a limited time. A careful planning of the interventions that will be done must be considered. These interventions might be initiated by the nurse herself, the physician, or other provider in the health care team. The implementation of the treatment and care is a part of intervention already and this must coincide to the set of goals or expected outcomes. An evaluation must be done to assess if the goal was met. If not, identify the possible steps or decisions that hinder in the achievement of such goal and learn from it. With such complex nursing process, cautious division of duties must be planned and done for process optimization. Hence, group role is a common practice in actual nursing duties. The responsibility is given based on the individual’s familiarity of the work and confidence in handling such work. It also requires accepting responsibly a variety of group roles, participating actively on the clinical rotation’s plan, staying on task, respecting different ideas, and disagreeing to ideas and not to the person whenever necessary. It is then relevant to know how to socially interact in a nursing environment. The usual group roles in such environment are manager, recorder or checker, skeptic, and energizer or summarizer. As a manager of the nursing team on a given shift, you must keep your team on track, direct them of the steps for completion of the tasks, and make sure everyone participates. As a recorder, act as a scribe for the team and make sure everyone agreed on the plans and actions being discussed. As a skeptic, help the team to avoid coming into agreement quickly and make sure all possibilities have been explored. Try to give alternative ideas too to make sure goals are achieved and well-polished. As an energizer, uplift the spirit of the team when things go low especially in cases where there are tough or vital patients. Summarize also what has been discussed and concluded by the team. The time must also be considered when assuming group roles in accomplishing each phase of the nursing process. Since human life is crucial and imperative, each second you lose or you waste is also the same second you will never get back. Just think about it. It could have weaved another chance or a longer chance for the patient to stay with his loved ones. References Goossen, W. T. F. , Ozbolt, J. G. , Coenen, A. , Park, H. , Mead, C. ,Ehnfors, M. , and Marin, H. F. 2004) Development of a Provisional Domain Model for the Nursing Process for Use within the Health Level 7 Reference Information Model. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association [Internet]. May–June, 11(3), pp. 186–194. Available from: [Accessed 20 January 2007]. Joubert, T. (n. d. ) Roles and social interaction. Hagar [Internet]. Available from: [Accessed 20 January 2007]. Mount Mercy College. (n. d. ) Nursing process guidelines [Internet]. Version 8. 19. 1. Iowa, MMC. Available from: [Accessed 20 January 2007].