Leadership and Professional Image
Task 1: Professional Portfolio
Introduction:
A professional portfolio will showcase your knowledge and skills to prospective
employers and will increase your marketability as a baccalaureate-prepared nurse. This
portfolio will help you, as a nurse, hone in on the concepts, strengths, and critical-
thinking abilities that define professional nursing practice. Throughout your time at
WGU, you have developed skills and knowledge that distinguish your practice as that of
a baccalaureate-prepared nurse. Items that display your skills and knowledge will be
showcased in this professional portfolio. You should organize your portfolio around the
four areas of professional nursing practice: quality and safety, advanced evidence-based
practice, applied leadership, and community and population health. This portfolio will
expand on the portfolio you already created in your Professional Roles and Values
course.
Leadership and Professional Image
A professional portfolio is understood as an organized collection of related artifacts
and documents that showcases one’s talents, skills, as well as charts of his/her professional
growth. It is notable that a professional portfolio could be developed and utilized for any
profession or discipline. This paper articulates my professional portfolio showcasing items
that display my skills and knowledge as a baccalaureate-prepared nurse. The portfolio is
organized around the four areas of professional nursing practice, namely community and
population health, applied leadership, advanced evidenced-based practice, and quality and
safety.
A. Web Folio Builder
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Professional Mission Statement
As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, my professional mission is to make a positive
difference in the lives of my patients and provide compassionate and competent care to all
patients and their family members. In working as a professional nurse, I would be devoted,
loving, and caring for patients and family members of all ethnicities and backgrounds. I
swear to remain professional, honest, and educated throughout my nursing career. I will
empower the staffs, patients, and family members that I work with through providing them
with an environment of information, resources, and support, which allows them to attain their
highest potential. Within the profession of nursing, I would like to focus my energies and
time on offering quality and compassionate care to every patient. I will also recognize
patients not as charts, but rather as individuals. I would create a professional and positive
environment and endeavor to practice nursing in a holistic approach, integrating evidence-
based nursing practice and my understanding. I strive to uphold ethical values and standards,
such as social justice, autonomy, non-maleficence, altruism, beneficence, integrity, and
human dignity. I want to move forward in my career by seeking positions of leadership or
management. My professional mission statement will help in guiding me throughout my
nursing career by enabling me to employ best practices in nursing care.
Professional Summary
The specific artifacts/completed work in my portfolio represent me as a learner and a
healthcare professional as they provide evidence of my achievements, experience, progress,
as well as goals over time as a learner and as a healthcare professional. They demonstrate a
competency, skill, or learning that I acquired from work experience, training, or education.
The specific artifacts represent my professional strengths by demonstrating my professional
achievements and progress over time in the profession of nursing. They illustrate my skills
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and competencies, in addition to my accomplishments and abilities, which I can communicate
to potential employers.
I have encountered quite a few challenges during the progression of my program. The
first one is money. The costs of tuition are increasing at a very high rate. Also, there are other
costs that I had to bear including the costs of textbooks, transportation, supplies, and meal.
However, I was able to overcome this specific challenge by seeking student loans, which can
be obtained rather quickly. Besides, I worked on-campus, which was important in reducing
my transportation costs and helped me to stay more focused on my academic work. I also
created a budget for eating out and shopping and stuck to it.
The second challenge that I faced was juggling different things such as a sports team,
a club, academic work, and job. Sometimes I crammed all these activities into a single day
and could not get an adequate amount of sleep. I was able to overcome this challenge by
deciding what is important. This meant prioritizing and scheduling studies, events, meetings,
and games accordingly. The third challenge was homesickness. I particularly faced this
challenge during my first and second years in college, considering that the college was very
far away from home. Feeling homesick had an impact on my academic performance, albeit a
slight impact. To overcome this challenge, I planned to visit home at least one or two times
each month. I also asked my family members and friends to send me emails and make phone
calls to me.
I have been able to fulfill various roles during my program, including the scientist,
detective, and manager of the healing environment roles. I fulfilled the scientist role by
participating in scientific inquiry to inform healthcare decisions. I also did so by critiquing,
disseminating, and implementing evidence to influence practice. I fulfilled the detective role
by using nursing science and clinical imagination in detecting subtle changes and divergences
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from the expected patterns of being to control or prevent adverse outcomes. I fulfilled the
manager of the healing environment role by acknowledging the healing environment as being
global and comprise considerations of healthcare policy, regulations, and finance. I then
created, coordinated, and advocated for an interdisciplinary and respectful environment,
which affirms the dignity of the human experience and fosters optimal wellbeing.
The coursework helped me to meet each of the nine nursing program outcomes
through various learning experiences and activities that I undertook during the program.
Because of the coursework, I was able to demonstrate fundamental capabilities, skills, and
knowledge necessary to attain the learning outcomes of the nursing program. Since the
beginning of my program, I have grown professionally by gaining knowledge, skills, and
capabilities that I did not have at the start of the program.
B. Quality and Safety
Quality is professionally defined as the best possible health outcomes given the
available resources and circumstances, in line with patient-centered care (Mitchell, 2015). On
the other hand, safety denotes decreasing the risk of needless harm to an acceptable minimum
level. It is notable that patient safety, as Nieva and Sorra (2013) pointed out, refers to the
freedom from hazards because of medical error or medical care within the general practice
setting. It is widely seen as an important dimension of the quality framework for general
practice (Sandars & Esmail, 2014).
The program assisted me in developing my professional definition by educating me
on various subjects, matters, and issues about patient safety and quality, including how to
deliver high-quality care to patients and how to improve the safety of patients under my
supervision. Through the program, I also learned about some of the proven interventions and
techniques that I can utilize as a nurse to enhance patient outcomes.
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The artifacts in my portfolio that support my definition includes essays, presentations,
projects, and tests that I completed as part of the coursework assigned to me in class. These
artifacts support my definition of quality and safety in that it is in these artifacts where I have
previously explored the topic of patient safety and quality in detail, and my definition is
largely drawn from my conceptualization of safety and quality as described in those artifacts.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) certificate is important for my future
role as a professional nurse in that it will allow me to improve patient care. Through the
course, I was able to learn about vital subjects such as health equity, population health,
person-family centered care, quality-cost-value of care, leadership, patient safety, and
improvement capability. Each of these topics is pertinent and of major importance to nursing
(Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2018). Improvement capability, for instance, is
focused on making change within the healthcare environment, which is typified, by patient
safety issues and medical errors. In my future role as a professional nurse, enabling change
within my healthcare facility may be vital, over and above being an ethical obligation of
professional nursing practice (Institute for Healthcare Improvement, 2018).
In essence, this principle is significant in my professional career in the field of nursing
given that if I identify ways of reducing errors within the organization, or if I notice safety
issues, I have the legal obligation to act upon it, as well as a moral obligation as a caring
person and for the patients. Also, in my future role as a professional nurse, I will have an
obligation to address patient safety issues within my professional practice setting. The
decisions that I will make in my future role as a nurse should take into account patient safety.
A foundation stone of my career in the field of nursing is to always keep patients in mind.
This fact is exemplified by the IHI certificate and the Open School education (Institute for
Healthcare Improvement, 2018).
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C. Evidence-Based Practice
Evidence-based practice is professionally defined as the careful utilization of current
evidence to make decisions about patient care (Schmidt & Brown, 2014). It is a problem-
solving approach to administrative issues and clinical practice which integrates the values and
preferences of the patient, one’s clinical expertise, and a methodical search for and critical
appraisal of the most pertinent evidence in answering an important clinical question (Melnyk
& Fineout-Overholt, 2014). The program assisted me in developing my professional
definition by incorporating evidence-based practice into the curricula. The undergraduate
program efficiently integrated evidence-based practice into courses, which prepared me as a
future nurse to embrace evidence-based practice within the clinical practice. Nursing
academics play an integral role in influencing the incorporation of evidence-based practice
into the nursing curricula (Malik, McKenna & Griffiths, 2016). The artifacts in my portfolio
that support my definition include essays, presentations that I made about evidence-based
practice, and videos. These artifacts support my definition of evidence-based practice by
providing evidence of how I have previously engaged in evidence-based practice in the
clinical setting.
I can evaluate current primary research and apply the concepts to my nursing practice
based on relevancy and believability. This means that I can only apply the results and
findings to practice if those findings/results are sufficiently relevant and believable. Besides,
in evaluating current research, I will focus more on primary research and resources and less
on secondary ones. This research will facilitate quality improvement in clinical practice
(Sackett et al., 2014). My experience in the program helped me to attain excellence in
evidence-based practice by allowing me to gain the skills, abilities, and knowledge to be able
to effectively engage in evidence-based practice within the clinical setting (Sackett et al.,
2014). As such, I can now properly integrate the best available evidence in guiding nursing
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care and improving patient outcomes. This will help me in addressing healthcare questions
with a qualitative and evaluative approach.
D. Applied Leadership
Applied leadership entails working in leadership positions and demonstrating
leadership skills in various roles. The program assisted me in developing my professional
definition by providing me with an opportunity to apply my leadership skills, especially
within an interdisciplinary team. At some point during the program, I took part in working in
an inter-professional team and demonstrated my leadership abilities. Nursing staffs are at the
core of inter-disciplinary teams owing to their extensive clinical knowledge, and the
extensive amount of time they spend with patients (Lamont & Lyons, 2014). The use of
professional collaboration facilitates more effective accomplishment of patient outcomes and
patient care goals. Communication is an integral aspect of the patient care process. Nurses are
leaders due to their capacity to communicate with the team professionally and efficiently
(Lamont & Lyons, 2014).
The artifacts in my portfolio that support my definition include internship and work
experience, leadership experience and examples, interdisciplinary projects, photographs, and
a video from a leadership course. These artifacts support my definition of applied leadership
by providing evidence of how I demonstrated applied leadership in certain contexts.
Professional collaboration is important for effective nursing leadership because it helps to
improve patient outcomes. Effective working in an extensive network of alliances, as Lamont
and Lyons (2014) pointed out, is crucial to patient outcomes. Collaborative behaviors among
nurse leaders are essential to optimize patient outcomes. When there is effective nursing
leadership thanks to professional collaboration, the cost of care delivery and the quality of
care would also be optimized (Lamont & Lyons, 2014).
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E. Community and Population Health
Community and population health are concerned with the health outcomes of a
grouping of people, including the distribution of those health outcomes in the group (Kindig,
Asada & Booske, 2015). Usually, the groups are geographic populations for instance
communities or even whole countries, although they could also be other groupings like
prisoners, people who are disabled, ethnic groups, employees, or some other defined groups.
Their health outcomes are relevant to policymakers in private and public sectors (Kindig &
Stoddart, 2013). The program assisted me in developing my professional definition by giving
me a chance of engaging in community and population health in the form of a Community
Health Nursing task. In this task, I was able to work with a specific population.
The artifacts in my portfolio that support my definition include videos from my
participation in the task, written documents, projects, and presentations. These artifacts
support my definition of community and population health by providing evidence of my
involvement in it. During my Community Health Nursing task, I learned about the health
outcomes of a specific group. Also, I learned about their overall health, as well as the
distribution of health within that population. What I learned led to my community diagnosis
since I was able to find out the health determinants such as the physical environment,
genetics, individual behavior, medical care systems, and the social environment. After
working with the population, my initial focus and diagnosis evolved in that I was able to
conduct proper diagnosis to other populations in different communities.
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) certificate is important for my
future role as a professional nurse. Genetics has become a vital thing to understand even in
acute care settings. I was able to acquire crucial knowledge and skills that would help me in
identifying the genetic risk factors within a given patient situation. I am now able to guide a
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patient in the right direction, for instance to a genetic counselor or a doctor referral. Besides,
Genetics Nursing has some ethical considerations and issues, for example, cancers in family
histories and prenatal testing. With the AMNH certification, I am competent enough to help
advocate for the rights of the patient while making decisions about genetics. Thanks to this
knowledge, I am now a better-prepared nurse to deliver more comprehensive and safer
patient care in the future.
F. Appendix to the Portfolio
Nursing Conceptual Model
Professional Resume
A link to the current IHI Course Catalog
References
Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2018). IHI Open School Online Courses. Retrieved
from
http://www.ihi.org/education/IHIOpenSchool/Courses/Pages/OpenSchoolCertificate
s.aspx
Kindig D., Asada Y., & Booske, B. (2015). A Population Health Framework for Setting
National and State Health Goals. JAMA, 299(5): 2081-2083.
Kindig, D. A., & Stoddart, G. (2013). What is population health? American Journal of Public
Health, 93(2): 366-369.
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Lamont, S., & Lyons, S. (2014). Collaboration amongst clinical nursing leadership teams: A
mixed-methods sequential explanatory study. Journal of Nursing Management,
23(8): 12-26.
Malik, McKenna & Griffiths, 2016). How do nurse academics value and engage with
evidence-based practice across Australia: Findings from a grounded theory study.
Nurse Educ Today, 41(15): 54-59.
Melnyk, B. M., & Fineout-Overholt, E, (2014). Evidence-based practice in nursing &
healthcare: A guide to best practice, 3rd Edition. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott
Williams & Wilkins.
Mitchell, P. H. (2015). Defining patient safety and quality care. Rockville, MD: Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality.
Nieva, V. F., & Sorra, J. (2013). Safety culture assessment: a tool for improving patient
safety in healthcare organizations. Qual Saf Health Care, 12(2): 17–23.
Sackett, D.L., Straus, S.E., Richardson, W.S., Rosenberg, W.and Haynes, R.B. (2014).
Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach Evidence Based Medicine.
Second Edition Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh & New York.
Schmidt, N. A. & Brown, J.M., (2014). Evidence-Based Practice for Nurses: Appraisal and
Application of Research. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett.
Sandars, J., & Esmail, A. (2014). The frequency and nature of medical error in primary care:
understanding the diversity across studies. Fam Pract, 20(3): 231–6.