The ANA’s scope and standards of practice enhance nursing practice and health promotion by describing the “what,” “who,” “how,” “why,” and “when with regards to nursing practice (ANA, 2015). Code of ethics on the other hand explicitly outlines the values, obligations and primary goals associated with the profession. It expresses a nurses’ own understanding of the inherent commitments.

Nursing process entails a series of steps that are designed to enhance excellent care: assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. Clinical reasoning on the other hand involves a way of thinking that helps to determine, prevent and manage a patient’s problems (Kuiper et al., 2017). Both are important in that they have the ability of determining the outcome of a patient’s care.

Nurses use the nursing process to promote people’s health by following the inherent steps to help address the problems that patients might be facing. Nursing process is something that offers a framework to think through issues/problems and provides some form of organization to nurses’ critical thinking skills (Kuiper et al., 2017). The process is quite flexible as it allows for creativity and the aspect of thinking outside the box.

When it comes to promoting health and wellness, a nurse’s roles and responsibilities includes providing patients with information that is needed to manage and help improve their health (Edelman et al., 2017). Ensuring that patients access accurate information and at the same time advocating for healthy lifestyles can help the patients to have a better control of their health.

There are varied health promoting behaviors that a nurse can instigate towards others in his/her capacity. Among them is regular physical activities, low-fat diet, avoiding stress and smoking ,and maintaining a healthy body weight as these aspects help prevent numerous chronic diseases (Edelman et al., 2017).

References

ANA. (2015). Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice (3rd ed.). American Nurses Association.

Edelman, C., Mandle, C., & Kudzma, E. (2017). Health Promotion Throughout the Life Span – E-Book (9th ed.). Elsevier Health Sciences.

Kuiper, R., O’Donnell, S., Pesut, D., & Turrise, S. (2017). The essentials of clinical reasoning for nurses: Using the Outcome-Present State Test Model for Reflective Practice. Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International.