Nursing Curriculum for Meeting Health Workers Needs - Essay Example

curriculum development The skills of a health care provider are the heart of health care delivery system, thus, there is a need to prepare them differently in order to meet the needs of the clients - decrease errors in nursing care procedures and improve patient's safety as well as the quality of patient care. Curriculum should be viewed as an overall instructional plan which consist of testimonial of aims and objectives, theoretical knowledge, attitude towards work, practical skills to be acquired, and vital support materials to be utilized in its presentation. However in designing and upgrading Nursing Curriculum, important considerations are to be followed. It must be created to enhance core competencies among Nurse Practitioners and needed resources must be made available Introduction The extensive changes taking place in the field of health care during the last decade have grown interest and concern for more challenging health care services. For nurses, various competencies are needed and shall improve overtime. Service quality, clinical effectiveness and governance are primary major strands of most government's drive to build up and bring up to date the National Health Service. Consequently, this scenario resulted to the relationship between present health care policy as well as nursing practice. Focused Nursing Curriculum for Meeting Health Workers' Needs Regardless of discipline, nurses must acquire necessary the five vital core competencies, namely: Provide patient centered care, work in interdisciplinary teams, employ evidence-based practice, and apply quality improvement and to utilize informatics (Institute of Medicine, 2003). Curriculum Development has long been considered as a core-component of Vocational Education and Training. The word Curriculum (International Project on Technical and Vocational Education, 1993) refers to the educational path and refers to the learning process which is much more comprehensive fashion than is promising with learning content plans or learning material. Recently, development of curriculum is focused on the learner and not the content of learning (International Project on Technical and Vocational Education, 1993). Many faculties believed that their curriculum content integrates the core competencies in which students could meet. However, there some nurse educators who are able to identified that students had difficulty and were not able to develop requisite skills for practice. In the year 1995, 2000 and 2002 respectively (Medscape, 2009), subsequent revisions and expansions on Nursing Curriculum have been made to enhance core competencies among Nurse Practitioners. The said core competencies provided the framework in Nurse Practitioners' educational program curriculum. The development of the consensus-based competencies has provided further guidance in specialty areas (eg, pediatric, psychiatric-mental health, family, adult, gerontological, and women's health) to Nurse Educators. There were competencies included in the 2000 revision which focused on "cultural competence" in order to highlight the impacts of culturally competent care and further expands the curriculum to a global focus. The Department of Health in UK (2008) reiterates that its primary care trusts are accountable for assessing the needs of local population as well as putting in place National Healthcare Services to achieve the needs of their clients. At the core of nursing practice (Korn & Thomas, 2009) is a commitment to patient safety as well as quality in accordance to health care policy, standards, regulatory, publications and accreditation guidelines. Curriculum of nursing schools must recognize the patient or designee as the ultimate source of control and also the full partner in giving compassionate and coordinated care that emphasizes respect for patient values, preferences, and needs. Future health workers must be trained to later function effectively within nursing and also within inter-professional teams fostering unfasten communication, shared decision, integrate best existing evidence with clinical expertise, consult and collaborate with clinical experts and adhere to mutual respect in order to achieve quality patient care. Consequence for Curriculum Content to Vocational Training among Nurses Curriculum content if well implemented and evaluated leads to effectiveness of the training system. It may result to attract young generation (International Project on Technical and Vocational Education, 1993) to land into the profession of the future and skills that employers need. The health care professionals will be able to deliver not just the technical contents (skills) but also facilitate how they should cope with the new challenges (coping skills) as well, and prepare the said learners for lifelong learning by supplying them basic set of skills necessary to enable them to transfer from one workplace or area of work to another the moment they have entered the workforce. In 1988's investigation by Ruggiero, he found out that the graduates at that time lacked problem-solving and also decision-making skills. Lichtenstein & Fischhoff (1980) states that, there have been abundant interventions to teach decision making skills in the course of training. Unfortunately, most of these efforts have had little measurable impact and possible reasons could be: (1) use of unskilled subjects, (2) the lack of motivation to learn by the students, (3) absence of pertinent training materials, as well as (4) inadequate evaluation instruments. Today's general practitioners, nurse practitioners, community psychiatric nurses, including geriatricians, psychogeriatricians, and clinical pharmacists are already highly trained and are usually highly motivated personnel with a wide range of clinical skills. But, despite that, there are still shortcomings in clinical care which are received by the care home residents, and this could have been caused by the huge resource deficit of as far as the care is concerned, rather than inappropriateness of the care providers (Medscape, 2009). As cited by Medscape (2009) Hennessy (2000) charts the UK Project 2000 development, an education which is university- based diploma level education intended for all nurses from 1989. It also covered the introduction of the education-led supernumerary status, meaning, student is not part of the official workforce ratios. Their Branch programmes are presently divided into four clinical areas, namely: and learning disability, adult, mental health, and paediatric. At times, the process involves a disincentive for nurses to make use of the power of unity. By sorting out into branches the career in an early stage, there would be less likelihood of coordinating as well as utilising the overall power of the nursing profession in UK. Infection Control in Healthcare Communities Studies have proven that there was the lack of pertinent policies on occupational health pre-employment screening. In the studies it was discovered that several employers did not ensure the nonexistence of infectious disease proceeding to employment of individuals in several agencies or organisation. The managers stated that they were not conscious of any increased risk specially those overseas health care workers; they also did not want to appear as discriminating against people from overseas through meticulous occupational health screening. Lately, it was realized that obtaining a vaccination as well as immunisation history is supposed to be the minimum requirement of any occupational health policy and should be applied to all healthcare workers. This, if applied universally, would prevent employers from fearing they are discriminating against overseas healthcare workers (Buchan, 2002) Similarly, Coker (2003) recommended that vaccination and immunization procedures must carry the philosophy of a "welcome health check", while employers may offer a clear access to primary care services as well as occupational health support. Immigrants from several countries with a TB Incidence rate (over 40/100,000), are already considered as sufficient risk. Department of Health has responded to this concern by emphasizing that employers should be responsible for evaluating and responding to this risk. They clearly expounded that, appropriate policies must be obtainable to ensure that residents are guarded from healthcare staff with communicable disease (Farah, Meyer, Selmer, Heldal & Bjune, 2003). The NHS Health Care Philosophy Curriculum development basically includes national laws that pertain to technical and vocational education. The Government, education, industry and other social partners all together work and embody the system to provide guidance on the development, implementation and evaluation of curricula essential for Technical and vocational Education. The NHS Constitution pledges the Government to "provide a statement of accountability that is the system of responsibility as well as accountability for obtaining decisions in the NHS" (NHS, 2009 p 5). Building a Nursing Curriculum that identified educational needs There are several considerations in building Nursing Curriculum, these are: Availability of resources in order to develop and implement suitable curricula: Adherence to the National framework, Policies and Guidelines, which directs and encourages the overall process: National capacity needs by creating forums which can involve curriculum development discussions, staff (who is trained abroad, if necessary) to help produce curricula. In specific, the following must as well be planned, implemented and evaluated: (1) Defining curriculum development and its future developments; (2) Contents of curricula; (3) Technical experiences of the Personnel; (4) Frameworks, Policies and Guidelines for future development; (5) Future trends (6) Infrastructure for curriculum development as well as implementation; and (7) Financial Responsibility (International Project on Technical and Vocational Education, 1993). Moreover, to carry out the entire program pedagogical strategies for all competencies are equally important as the previously stated factors (Smith, Cronenwett, and Sherwood, 2007) and as far as instruction and student activities are concerned it shall be accounted that the following must also be complied: Lecture , Clinical experiences, Case studies, Paper assignments, Course modules, Web-based learning, Problem based learning, Inter-professional learning, Simulation and Return demonstrations. Finally, enhancement of the health care system particularly in the grassroots level must be a continuous process. It should be noted that if the educational system will not effectively work, how can effective care be delivered to clients' Nurse educators need to reconstruct curriculums utilized appropriate technology and pedagogies in education, as well as to upgrade and integrate core competencies of the future health care workers based on the present need of the society. Works Cited Buchan, J. 2002. International recruitment of nurses: United Kingdom case study. Edinburgh: Queen Margaret University College. Ball J, and Pike, G. 2005. Nurses in the Independent Sector 2005. Hove, UK: Employment Research Ltd. Coker R: Migration, public health and compulsory screening for TB and HIV- Asylum and Immigration working paper. London: Institute for Public Policy Research; 2003. Department of Health: Infection Control Guidance for Care Homes. London, Department of Health; 2006:7. Farah, M.G., Meyer, H.E., Selmer,R, Heldal, E, and Bjune, G. 2005. Long-term risk of tuberculosis among immigrants in Norway. International Journal of Epidemiology, 34(5):1005-1011. Health Protection Agency, 2004. WHO country data: estimated burden of TB. London. Lichtenstein, S., & Fischhoff, B. 1980. Training for calibration. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 26, 149-171. NHS Constitution. 2009. The Statement of NHS Accountability Room 611A Richmond House 79 Whitehall London SW1A 2NS. Ruggiero, V.R. 1988. Schools must make thinking skills the core of each course. The Kansas City Times, p. D-5. IOM report: To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System (IOM, 2000) IOM report: Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21stCentury (IOM, 2001) Read More