According to Chitty and Black (2011) professionalism involves the application of

knowledge and skills, a high standard of practice, leadership, self-regulation, professional

commitment, social values and service-directed activity. Other features that might additionally
serve to define a profession include a specialized education including theoretical knowledge;
authority granted by society in the form of licensure or certification; practitioner control over
practice autonomy; and a code of ethics which governs standards of conduct within the
discipline. This code, for nursing, is best enumerated in the American Nurses Association
(2010). Nurses, like other professionals in medicine, law, pharmacy, business, etc. are equally
tasked with a continued commitment to their profession in the form of continuous knowledge
acquisition and scientific rigor, civic action, support of professional organizations and workplace
advocacy.
The coursework that best clarified the practice of nursing as a profession for me was the
entire introduction and ongoing attempt to understand and master APA format writing used in the
professional nursing literature and the introduction to nursing research. Chitty and Black (2011)
further define a profession as a discipline that utilizes in its practice and communication a welldefined and well organized body of specialized knowledge which is on the intellectual level of
higher learning. My treatise, Guidance for Nursing Practice Decisions: The Roles of Nursing
Research and Evidence Review reflects my understanding of these traits that define nursing as a
profession. Central to this transformation is my appreciation of formal nursing research as a
cornerstone that defines, refines and buttresses the profession in the eyes of the general scientific
community. The standardization of what constitutes nursing research, the development of tools
to scrutinize evidence and the establishment of benchmarks to gauge the impact of research work

on clinical practice is, by definition, professional. This writing allowed me to acquire and apply
the skillset to systematically review two sources of evidence, employ nursing specific rules for
evidence analysis, and assign value to the selected works for clinical nursing practice.
Finally, the NURS 324 exercise in constructing a professional development plan
summarized in Standards of Professional Nursing Performance is evidence of a continued
commitment to specialized knowledge, scientific study and the personal development that are
hallmarks of a profession. This work was a candid, retrospective review and analysis of my
previous and current work and professional nursing experiences, in which I examined key
experiences, accomplishments, mistakes and missed opportunities, in light of the American
Nurses Association Standards of Professional Nursing Performance (ANA SPNP) criteria. In the
honest context of my past, I then constructed and critiqued goals for my best possible
professional future.
American Nurses Association (2010). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (2nd ed.). Silver
Spring, Maryland: Nursesbooks.
Chitty, K. K., & Black, B. P. (2011). Profession nursing: Concepts and challenges (6 ed.).
Maryland Heights, MO: Saunders Elsvier.
Ferris State University. (2015). BSN program outcomes
[Nursing]. Retrieved from http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/colleges/alliedhe/Nursing/BSNprogram-outcomes.htm