Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as an acute care nurse and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
An Acute Care Nurse provides advanced nursing care for patients with acute conditions like heart attack, respiratory distress syndrome or shock, pre and post-operative patients as well as perform advanced invasive diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.
Other responsibilities include - providing formal and informal education to other staff members, participating in patients care meetings and conferences, coordinating billing activities with supervising physicians, performing administrative duties that facilitate admission, transfer or discharge of patients, involved in the development of practice protocols, participating in patient's care meetings and conferences, referring patients for specialty treatments or consultations, assisting patients with organizing their health care system activities, assesses the patient's need for family members or caregivers, analyzing any indications, risk complications and cost-benefit tradeoffs.
Core Skills Required to be an Acute Care Nurse
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
An acute care nurse should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Verbal Communication:
Verbal Communication is the use of tones and language to relay a message; it aids as a vehicle for expressing ideas, concepts and it, is critical to the daily running of the business.
An Acute Care Nurse portrays his/her image and that of the company by the way he/she communicates; strong verbal communication skills are vital for business development and forging lasting relationships with customers, suppliers, and colleagues.
Teamwork Skills:
Teamwork is the process of collaboratively working with a group of people with an aim to achieve a set goal within a business ensuring that the staff and management cooperate using their skills and provide constructive feedback.
An Acute Care Nurse needs to exercise effectiveness and understanding in creating teamwork using the right techniques in an environment of trust and cooperation with the aim of increasing productivity, higher morale, and a fulfilled workforce.
Appraisal and Evaluation Skills:
Appraisal and Evaluation Skills are services that allow employers to assess their employees? contributions to the organization for the period they have been working with them.
An Acute Care Nurse must creatively develop a robust evaluation process that includes the standard evaluation form, approved performance measures, guidelines for presenting feedback and disciplinary procedures to promote staff recognition and rewarding following a fair assessment and appraisal process.
Dedication to Work:
Dedication to Work is a devotion or setting aside the scheduled time that you are required to work each day consistently without fail as well as being on time and giving 100% of your efforts to doing quality work.
An Acute Care Nurse ought to be dependable and set an example for the rest of the workforce by showing up for work on time every day consistently and producing quality work while applying company policies and business strategies.
Flexibility:
Flexibility is an important skill that allows employers and employees to make an arrangement about working on maintaining a work/life balance to help organizations improve the productivity and efficiency of their balance.
An Acute Care Nurse needs creative ideas on how to plan flexible schedules for all his employees by incorporating flexible working arrangements and individual flexibility agreements that allow negotiation to change how certain agreements apply to them and how they can be adjusted.
Physical Abilities:
Physical Abilities is the ability of one's strengths and limitations that are also known as the individual resources to perform well at the tasks given.
An Acute Care Nurse must understand that his employees are very different types of people who vary in what they can or cannot do and treat each one with respect while supporting them to become the best in what they do.
Self Awareness:
Self Awareness is the ability to have a sound understanding of who you are as a person and how to relate to the world in which you live by understanding your strengths and weaknesses and how to manage them in the workplace.
An Acute Care Nurse must creatively know how to administer the workforce diversity by understanding the culture identity, biases, and stereotypes and become more aware on how he reflects his thoughts, feelings, and behavior towards the staff.
Enjoyment of the Job:
Enjoyment of the Job is the ability to enjoy what you do rather than enjoying what you earn from it.
An Acute Care Nurse needs to creatively learn of ways to motivate his employees to benefit from the workplace by matching their personality to the culture of the organization where they fit best and allowing them to explore their hidden talents to grow and mature with the team.
Handling Stress:
Handling Stress is the skill to balance the requirements of the job and your abilities or available resources in performing it.
An Acute Care Nurse needs to creatively learn how to schedule work according to the abilities of different individuals to ensure a balance that will not put an unsustainable level of pressure on the employees and cause them to accumulate work related stress.
Personal Relationships:
Personal Relationships is the relationship between individuals who have or have had a continuing relationship of any nature either professional or informal.
An Acute Care Nurse reserves the right to take prompt action if an actual or potential conflict of interest arises concerning individuals who engage in a personal relationship that may affect terms and conditions of employment and he should not also date a subordinate.
Hard Skills Required to be an Acute Care Nurse
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
An acute care nurse should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.