PROFESSIONAL ATTRIBUTES
Professional Identity
The concept of professional identity in nursing is defined as a sense of oneself that is influenced by the characteristics, norms, and values of the nursing discipline, resulting in an individual thinking, acting, and feeling like a nurse.
Professional identity is part of the larger notion of identity; within identity, personal identity exists, with professional identity as a subset of personal identity.
Foundational definitions relevant to nursing identity include:
Nursing encompasses the care and nurturing of healthy and ill people, individually or in groups and communities (Nursing scope).
The American Nurses Association (ANA) Code of Ethics provides guiding principles for practice.
ANA Code of Ethics (2015)
1. The nurse practices with compassion and respect for the inherent dignity, worth, and unique attributes of every person.
2. The nurse’s primary commitment is to the patient, whether an individual, family, group, community or population.
3. The nurse promotes, advocates for, and protects the rights, health, and safety of the patient.
4. The nurse has authority, accountability, and responsibility for nursing practice; makes decisions; and takes action consistent with the obligations to promote health and provide optimal care.
5. The nurse owes the same duties to self as to others, including the responsibility to promote health and safety, preserve wholeness of character and integrity, maintain competence and continue personal and professional growth.
6. The nurse, through individual and collective effort, establishes, maintains and improves the ethical environment of the work setting and conditions of employment that are conducive to safe, quality health care.
7. The nurse, in all roles and settings, advances the profession through research and scholarly inquiry, professional standards development, and the generation of both nursing and health policy.
8. The nurse collaborates with other health professionals and the public to protect human rights, promote health diplomacy, and reduce health disparities.
9. The profession of nursing, collectively through its professional organizations, must articulate nursing values, maintain integrity of the profession, and integrate principles of social justice into nursing and health policy.
Scope and Formation of Professional Identity
Scope: Professional identity develops through real or simulated experiences, reflection, and role modeling by colleagues.
Norms and values of a professional registered nurse include integrity, compassion, courage, humility, advocacy, human flourishing, and other core attributes.
The formation of professional identity involves ongoing education, practice, ethical comportment, and a growth mindset.
Core Virtues and Professional Traits
Integrity
Integrity is acting in accordance with an appropriate code of ethics and accepted standards of practice.
It is reflected in professional practice when the nurse is honest and provides care based on an ethical framework accepted within the profession.
Compassion
Compassion motivates people to alleviate the physical, mental, or emotional pains of others, often accompanied by sensitive understanding of suffering.
Courage
Nurses with courage believe in themselves and their skills; they hold themselves fully accountable and do not blame others for failures.
Courage helps identify poor practice and supports speaking up to improve patient care.
Humility
Professional humility involves realistically assessing strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, and abilities; cultural humility is necessary to provide optimal care and recognize different meanings of health across patients.
Advocacy
Nurses educate and speak up for those in their care; advocacy is a central part of trusting relationships and patient protection.
Involvement can include joining state nurses’ associations and engaging with legislators and committees to influence policy.
Human Flourishing
An effort toward self-actualization and fulfillment within a broader community; nurses help individuals reclaim or develop pathways toward human flourishing, promoting holistic well-being for individuals and populations.
Identity Formation and Self-Care Elements
Identity formation emphasizes centered self-care, workplace knowledge, and integrity.
Key elements include:
Self-awareness and accountability
Lifelong honesty and integrity
Dynamic emotional intelligence and empathy to grow
Relatability and reflective capacity
Maturity to care and resilience
A learner mindset and the Tree of Impact (growth and influence through learning)
Social support and psychological safety in an inclusive, open, patient-centered environment
Innovativeness and a culture of climate that supports continuous improvement
These elements contribute to an integrated professional identity that aligns personal growth with patient care and system-level impact.
The content also references the concept of “Identity Formation Centered” around self-care and workplace knowledge, suggesting that personal and professional development are tightly linked.
Being a Nurse: Realities, Attitudes, and Perspectives
A reflective, sometimes poetic portrayal of the nursing vocation includes the following ideas:
You will never be bored in nursing; you will face constant challenges and responsibility with limited authority.
You will enter people’s lives and make a difference, receiving both blessings and criticisms.
You will witness both life beginnings and endings, experience triumphs and failures, and experience a range of emotions including sadness and joy.
You will be surprised by human capacity for love, courage, and endurance; you will repeatedly confront what it means to be human and humane.
Representative descriptors of nurses drawn from the material include: comforting, caring, generous, advocates, intelligent, resilient, dedicated, healers, kind, proud, educators, gentle, nurturers, respected, leaders, ethical, supportive.
Student Nurses Association and Community Engagement
The Student Nurse Convention typically occurs in February; consideration to join the New Jersey Student Nurses Association (NJNS) as a representative organization for nursing students in New Jersey.
Additional discussion about involvement may occur in class to encourage student engagement and professional growth.
Connections to Foundational Principles and Real-World Relevance
The material ties professional identity to foundational ethical frameworks (ANA Code of Ethics) and nursing scope definitions.
It emphasizes alignment between personal development and professional responsibilities, including patient advocacy, interprofessional collaboration, and social justice in health policy.
It highlights the importance of soft skills (empathy, humility, communication) in alongside clinical competencies (clinical judgment, evidence-based practice, safe quality care).
It suggests that professional identity is formed through practice, reflection, mentorship, and role modeling, both in real and simulated experiences.
Ethical, Philosophical, and Practical Implications
Ethical implications: adherence to the ANA Code of Ethics, upholding patient rights, promoting health equity, and fostering a just culture within healthcare environments.
Philosophical implications: human flourishing as a moral basis for nursing; nursing as a moral and social enterprise grounded in compassion, justice, and service.
Practical implications: continuous professional development, accountability, self-care, and creating psychologically safe workplaces that enable learning and high-quality care.
References and Attribution
Core concepts are drawn from PROFESSIONAL ATTRIBUTES and identity formation frameworks by Prof. Carol Ann Laraia-Bendana (2025).
Design and formatting credits: Andriani Creative, 2018.
Quick recap of key terms to memorize
Professional identity: sense of self shaped by nursing norms/values; subset of personal identity.
ANA Code of Ethics: nine core ethical duties guiding nursing practice.
Core virtues: integrity, compassion, courage, humility, advocacy, human flourishing.
Scope and formation: identity develops through experience, reflection, role modeling.
Self-care and resilience: essential for sustainable professional growth and safe patient care.
Tree of Impact: metaphor for growth and influence through learning and practice.
Human flourishing: moral basis for holistic well-being in patients and communities.
Notes on numbers and citations
ANA Code of Ethics (year): .
Historical note: Nursing definition and scope include a 1980 definition attributed to the Nurses Association.
References to organized student engagement: NJNS (New Jersey Student Nurses Association).