Assignment: Professional Body Membership
Assignment: Professional Body Membership
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
British Journal of Community Nursing Vol 15, No 11 547
w Training and competency records w Records of appraisal and personal development plans w Professional development activities with supporting
notes outlining the learning from each activity and some reflection on how it has informed and influenced practice
w Activities to support learning and assessment of oth- ers – including mentoring, preceptoring and teaching of pre- and post-registration nursing students, allied health professional students and the non-professional workforce
w Practice development activities undertaken to support evidence-based practice such as audits, development of protocols or guidelines, and change management projects
w Publications and conference presentations w Professional body membership and any associated work
Registered nurses should however, feel free to be creative in their selection of material for inclusion. Hillard (2006) advocates that practitioners should undertake regular writ- ten reflections on incidents that have occurred in the prac- tice arena, and using these within a professional portfolio. She suggests this enables the practitioner to demonstrate self-awareness, to identify the knowledge embedded in
daily nursing practice and to consider areas of practice that require development. This may be particularly pertinent for nurses working in primary care. The nature of work in the community is that it is often carried out by lone practition- ers who, although function as part of a wider health-care team, actually deliver care independently on a daily basis. Reflecting on individual episodes of care may support the autonomous nurse in evidencing skills and knowledge in work that other wise may remain ‘hidden’ to others. Schultz (2007) discussed how reflective practice has the potential to help community practitioners ‘unlock the tacit knowledge and understanding that they have of their practice.’ By recording this, there is the potential for the knowledge to be shared, made explicit and accessible to the wider nursing community to enable the development of practice.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
