EXPLORING THE VARIOUS ROLES WITHIN SPECIALIST NURSING
Abstract
This essay is a brief exploration into the vast and varied roles within specialist nursing. Specialist nursing is vital in meeting the complex health needs of a diverse population increasingly faced with issues related to long-term conditions. Over half of the 28,959 Various Other Professionals include nurses, midwives and health visitors in posts such as NHS management as well as nursing assistant, health visitor and community matron positions. This supports a multi-faceted role for the Specialist Nurse, with scope for autonomous practice and the undertaking of research activity. This sits comfortably alongside the more typically recognized role of the Clinical Nurse Specialist (CNS), consuming welfare support from acute through to primary healthcare settings (Tiliander et al., 2022).
In examining Specialist Nursing, two main themes arise: the first explores provision of care, educational and supportive roles for patients and their families. The second idea looks at specialist nursing roles that cross the divide between service and management support provision. The structure of essay is also outlined and this reflects the diversity and specialization inherent in the roles being discussed. Specialist Nursing encompasses a wide array of positions within nursing, knowledge of these is not only an educational benefit but also has capacity to support those embarking on a career within nursing. The dynamic nature of nursing roles ensures there will always be new ground to cover. New training may be contemporarily aimed at areas where job shortages occur. That this drives the evolution of increasingly specialized competencies for nursing roles is in keeping with the expertise paradigm, with nursing being driven to a higher education level. So, too, the nature of patient encounters and the needs of the client group are frequently changing, nursing needs to be accordingly fluid. That around the current discussion focuses on the role being fulfilled by those currently in training or the service provided just on completion of a specialist nursing course. All this having been said, it is accepted that nursing is skilled and there are certain recurrent duties fulfilled by many (often diverse) nursing roles (Kilpatrick et al., 2023).
