Evolving Practice of Nursing and Patient Care Delivery Models
The United States healthcare system is going through a process of restructuring where nurses are expected to play significant roles. This is characterized by evolution of nursing roles and responsibilities. Also, provision of nursing care services and promotion of wellness has posed several challenges as diseases are becoming difficult to treat. Further, communities are reporting more healthcare needs that cannot be met by available nurses. Primarily, it is opined that the healthcare system must adequately address the shrinking numbers of nurses that cannot keep up with growth of community and needs (Bates, 2010). The system must implement adjustments that would help cope up with the growing concerns in medical homes. Currently, the system is dealing with diseases such as diabetes and obesity that requires consistent attention of nurses. Significantly, efforts must be aimed at improving the overall nursing practice by establishing how to train nurses to spearhead ways through which the sector can grow.
First, it is imperative to create awareness on how important nurses are in the wake of growth and development of the sector. The awareness must address how the system is prepared to cope up with the growing concerns occasioned by increase in cases on complicated illness within community setups. It is difficult for people to address their own needs when it comes to diseases such as diabetes and obesity because they lack the requisite knowledge. In the midst of all the changes expected to be initiated nurses must adequately ensure continuity of care to the clients. The major problem facing the system as it tries to address community needs are the inadequate numbers of nurses and the inexperience exhibited by many of them. Further, there is increased demand of services and so the system cannot assume this aspect because it goes together with reforms. Improving the level of expertise of nurses will go a long way in ensuring quality service provisions to the people. The focus of nursing practice should be to anticipate and provide care to those in need.
The growth and transformation of the health system is likely to include the expansion and re-conceptualization of the role of nurses. So, it is imperative for such expansions to positively contribute to quality, access and value of services offered due to maximization of education and training. Experts believe that implementations of programs that will allow nurses to practice to their full potential will enlarge scope and thus positively impact on patients and the system as a whole (Fisher et al., 2009). The transformation of nurse-managed health clinics into primary care-focused institutions is likely to be based on maximization of nurses and primary care providers in the future. Furukawa et al. (2010) contend that growth of the sector is bound to ensure affordability by redistributing nurses to primary care centers to increase quality while reducing cost of accessing services. Besides, hospital visits are likely to be reduced since nurses will establish healthy relationships with communities to create more effective plans that align to demands of patients. Accountable care organizations are a system of medical professionals and medical facilities who adequately share the responsibilities of providing medical care to their patients. In line with transformation and reforms in the healthcare industry, nurses are to play significant roles in managing all the healthcare needs of communities. Further, nurses are to be tasked with the responsibilities of providing incentives to patients so that they may cooperate in order to avoid needless tests to save on costs.
To conclude, nurses must play critical roles during restructuring of the health system to necessitate improvement of service provision and growth. They must be in great positions to deal with barriers as they try to transform their practice. They are expected to fully abide by the regulations governing their practice, fully employ evidence-based practice during diagnosis and comprehensively understand role expansion during the restructuring process. Finally, they should be ready to seek for more opportunities in challenging environments if they want to advance their careers and practice.
References
Bates D. W. (2010). Primary care and the U.S. health care system: What needs to change?
Journal of General Internal Medicine, 25(10), 998–999. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2955476/. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
Fisher, E., McClellan, M., Bertko, J., Lieberman, S., Lee, J., Lewis, J. and Skinner, J. (2009).
Fostering accountable health care: Moving forward in Medicare. Health Affairs 28:W219-W231. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656392/. Retrieved May 17, 2018.
Furukawa, F., Raghu, T. and Shao, B. (2010). Electronic medical records, nurse staffing, and
nurse-sensitive patient outcomes: Evidence from California hospitals. Health Services Research 45(4):941-962 Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2910563/. Retrieved May 17, 2018.