7 Essential Nursing Skills

• Review seven essential nursing skills that can help prepare nurses for a high-stress career in healthcare.
• It is crucial for nurses to have strong listening ears, quick feet, and thick skin. 
• To succeed in a nursing career, it is helpful to have a laser focus, a loud voice, and a big heart.

Few things are more intimidating and daunting than walking onto a floor for the first time. In some respects, the new nurse, likely in their 20s or 30s, immediately feels transported back into second grade with questions like “Will they like me?” “Where do I sit?” “Will there be snacks?”  

The facility will quickly become a second home, with secret passages and familiar sounds, complete with a second family.  

However, the transition is daunting because it is not taught in nursing school. In school, you are taught the mechanics of nursing, but not all aspects of nursing are physical.  

To help guide a new nurse, here are 7 essential skills every new nurse should strive to develop as they proceed through orientation.

1. Listening Ears 

One of the first skills a nurse should develop is a listening ear. Nursing school teaches you to listen for the physical, but a nurse knows listening extends beyond auscultation.

A nurse’s ear picks up on patient fears and anxieties. A nurse’s ear hears a “brushed off” symptom and alters care to prevent complications. A nurse who actively listens can prevent safety issues, detect changes, and advocate for the patient.

A listening ear only works when the nurse stops and tunes in to the situation. Observe and listen.  

2. Quick Feet 

A nurse learns kinesthetically, meaning the new nurse should jump at every opportunity presented. Have you already placed a Foley today? You would gladly put in another. Why?

Well, the new nurse knows that even routine skills are scaffolded opportunities. A skill is an opportunity to reinforce customer service, patient education, knowledge of equipment, and the skill itself.

The new nurse also knows that opportunity exists by being in the room where it happens. New nurses, when possible, should be the nurse who helps. Help with the fluid bolus, intubation, and code.

Every time the nurse helps, the nurse grows.  

3. Writer’s Cramp 

Every nurse has their “brain,” the group of papers that holds the key to all patient information. Learning how to write and read a brain takes months of practice. Practice, which, if done correctly, should give the new nurse a glorious case of writer’s cramp.

Write everything down. Write down your patient labs, completed treatments, and items to chart; writing it down will help ensure accurate documentation and a successful report.

There will be a nurse who can recite everything from memory, but that will not be the new nurse. The new nurse should take notes on everything.  

4. Thick Skin 

As a new nurse, I would stay awake at night, replaying conversations: “Did I sound incompetent when I gave the report?” “Why didn’t I say this when Dr. X said that?” Due to the complex nature of healthcare, people can forget to operate with patience and grace. 

Patience is an easy thing to preach but a difficult thing to practice. A skill vital to nursing is the ability to operate with grace even when others do not give it to you. Developing a “thick skin” or the ability to not assign a motive behind an action is a hard skill to acquire.

It takes active practice and discipline, but when developed, it will help you to stay focused on the tasks at hand and not be distracted by what someone could have meant.  

5. Laser Focus 

My favorite part about the hospital is the atmosphere. I love the buzzes, the beeps, and the energy.

Hospitals, however, are also places filled with distractions. Alarm fatigue is a true and real phenomenon whose price is not fully understood.

The nurse is constantly bombarded with phone calls and call lights while balancing the intricate tasks of patient healing. The nurse needs to be focused and goal-oriented throughout the shift.

Constant prioritization and triaging of situations help the new nurse to ensure vital tasks are done and patient safety is maintained.  

6. Loud Voice 

Simulation is a lie. No matter how hard your nursing school instructors tried, you are not ready to talk to a provider.

The first time you are asked to call a provider, everything you ever learned about SBAR and communication will leave your body. Once you gain your footing on speaking to a doctor, you must learn how to advocate with the doctor.

The need for a nurse to advocate for a patient, even when it is hard, is one of the bedrock skills of our profession. The day will come when your patient needs something, and no one will listen.

That is when the nurse shines by applying professional pressure to ensure that the patient is cared for properly. A nurse has to learn the importance of finding his/her voice in hard situations.  

7. Big Heart 

Loving patients is the honor of our profession. It is easy to love the sweet newborn babies and the adorable pediatric ward. It is more difficult to love those suffering from mental illness, homelessness, or substance abuse.

The nurse understands that all patients are equally deserving of love. Sometimes, the patient does not even love themselves; the love of the nurse breaks through barriers and starts to heal.

A nurse will often be the last face seen by a patient, an honor I carry with me to this day. I can see the faces of many who passed before me, some without family, in a beeping hospital room, but never alone. Caring for patients on their worst and best days is an honor, and nurses see it all.  

The Bottom Line

The one thing a new nurse should truly understand is that a nurse is never complete. We are always growing in skills, both physical and emotional. As nurses enter our profession, I hope they approach it with an open mind and realize we learn as much from our patients as they learn from us. 

I have had lessons in gardening, parenting, mathematics, and even how to pickle a green bean at a patient’s bedside. These skills will help to guide a new nurse, but above all, regardless of skill, becoming a nurse is more than a profession; it is a calling.   

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