Future of Healthcare Depends on the Role of Nurses - Research Paper Example

? The Future of Healthcare depends on the role of Nurses Nurses form the greatest number of medical practitioners in society. In order to improve health services, it is essential to ensure that the services offered by nurses and midwives are of the highest quality. Nurses are caregivers and contribute directly to offering primary health care to the people. It is critical to ensure that nurses receive adequate training to face the current challenges in the medical field. It is essential for nurses to display efficiency and competence for any health institution to be effective. The United Nation targets to have a transformed health system by 2015. Nurses contribute to the emotional, psychological, physical, and social being of people seeking medical attention and the society. Strategies in the health sector run in hierarchy from the policy makers, to the practitioners and then to the public. Nurses and midwives are the last practitioners in the hierarchy and next to the patients. This position makes their role very critical. Whether health care will improve in society is dependent on the responsibility of all individuals in the hierarchy. However, nurses and midwives, being the majority and considering their position in the hierarchy, are the main determinants of the effects of change felt on the ground (Ogilvie and Sare, 2010). An analysis of the contribution of nurses to the future of health care is necessary. According to the global development goals set for achievement by 2015, there is a target to reduce child mortality, which is rampant in some regions of the world. Many of the strategies in place touch on the responsibility of nurses in provision of primary health care. The UN summit stipulated that the cause of most of these deaths was malaria, diarrhea, and malnutrition. The public needs education on how to handle these key causes of death of children under then age of five. In the hospital setting, the nurses play the most crucial role in prevention of child mortality (Barclay, 2010). Nurses offering pediatric care should be more aware and offer relevant advice to mothers on proper nutrition and basic hygiene. Nurses also partake in the distribution of nets in the prevention of malaria and offer advice on frequent treatment of the nets to the public (Sines, Saunders, and Janice, 2009). Without the efficiency of nurses, it is difficult to achieve this millennium goal. In order to achieve the development goal of ensuring maternal health care in all societies, it is the responsibility of nurses and midwives to provide the primary care to ensure that mothers no longer die from hemorrhage, infection, obstructed labor, and hypertensive pregnancies. Nurses specializing in midwifery are of key contribution to promoting maternal health. It is essential to ensure that they are qualified and are competitive for improved maternal health to become a reality. Nurses should provide quality prenatal and postnatal care comprehensively in the societies they are working in realizing that their roles are very important (Ball, 2000). HIV effects have increased in the recent past. This increase has forced leaders in the health sector to work tirelessly to reduce cases of new infections. Further, they aim at maximizing the care of people living with HIV to lengthen their lives. There are several fields in addressing the HIV epidemic. The first is prevention of the disease, which involves educating the public on modes of transmission and potential strategies in prevention. This is a responsibility of nurses assigned to voluntary counseling and testing centers. In addition, nurses are involved in the testing process and the crucial responsibility of post testing counseling. Scholars denote that nurses go a mile further to motivate and encourage HIV patients for them to undergo behavioral and attitude change. They also administer advanced care to patients who are in the final stages of the disease. Additionally, nurses do not relent as they advise relatives of patients on home based care to HIV patients. It is worth noting that nurses work in conjunction with other medical practitioners but their role is preliminary in addressing HIV as they link directly to the affected people. Statistics from South Africa emphasize the importance of nurses in addressing HIV and highlight that each new testing and counseling center requires three new nurses. As argued by Ogilvie and Sare, (2010), due to increasing numbers of people with HIV, some nurses are specialized in prescription of the anti retro viral drugs to ease the congestion in hospitals. These nurses also require skills that enable them assess the situation of patients and advise them accordingly on the adverse effect of drugs. In order to address HIV sufficiently, nurses need frequent update on any development in research because they are in the best position to create impact to the society. The United Nations Summit this year focused on laying strategies of addressing and coping with non-communicable diseases. According to recent studies, these are the cause of about sixty percent of deaths globally. Non- communicable diseases include; cancer, diabetes, heart, and respiratory diseases. Most of these diseases are the long-term effects of unhealthy lifestyle. The summit targets to advocate for lifestyle change as the leading strategy in prevention of non-communicable diseases. The public must receive information on the probable causes of these diseases. The role of nurses is of great importance in addressing these diseases. Nurses advise patients on proper lifestyle. Advanced practice nurses are involved in early detection of the diseases by carrying out diagnostic tests. Other advanced nurses are actively involved in research and relative studies that can help combat the emergence of the disease. Some of these diseases are terminal and patients require advanced care, emotional and physical support. Nurses are caregivers and offer this support to patients. Nurses in private practice offer home based care to the patients. Nurses play a critical role in emergency cases because they give support to doctors and surgeons. Response to emergencies depends greatly on their effectiveness and ability to think critically and creatively and make decisions in critical conditions. In such cases, nurses require to be self-aware and cooperate with doctors to save lives. Nurses also need to understand palliative care and offer the best to the elderly who are living the last days of their lives. They should give them the right attitude and peace of mind for them to be happy until the last moment. In the world of technology, hospitals are employing programs of data and knowledge management and nurses handling records and statistics play a critical role in ensuring faster services. Nurses should compile data from all patients and upload to the available software. This data ensures compliance and customer care in hospitals. Nurses need to be good managers of knowledge foe this system to be effective. Some advanced nurses carry out research and generate new information for use in the hospital setting (Barclay, 2010). It is evident that nurses play a critical role in the improvement of health care in society. It is of importance that they receive adequate training to enable them to contribute effectively to achieving the global goals concerning health. The curricula in training should be diverse to equip them with more skills. Nurses need advanced skills to handle the challenges in their career. According to Smith and Pressman (2010), nurses should establish an open and transparent communication with the patients. It is sad that this is not the case in many health institutions and medical errors occur because communication breaks down between the service providers and patients. The support a nurse offers to a patient through communication affects health of the patient and communication in training institutions should be elaborate. Training in communication should be patient focused. Nurses perform care activities to patients undergoing different forms of treatment and communication between nurses and these patients affects the healing process. Nurses should receive training on professional entrepreneurship to enable them be innovative and creative in businesses that promote health care. Specialization in the advanced practice-nursing program should be intensive enough to equip the nurses with valuable skills and knowledge. Training institutions should ensure that the nursing program is extensive and covers all important aspects of care giving. Hospitals should organize training programs that keep nurses updated on current medical procedures to increase their efficiency. Nurses have great potential in reforming any health system; however, nobody considers their opinion in the reform systems. Nurses understand where the medical system fails because they have a direct link top the patient. Policy makers in the health sector should consider their opinion because they understand the gap between proper health care and the patients (Barclay, 2010). From his study, Barclay argues that nurses can see the gap and the consequences and therefore understand better areas that need change. They actively carry out preventive measures of illnesses and are aware of the issues that patients raise. Therefore, their role in the health care provision places them in a position to recognize the failures in the health system. Therefore, it is necessary to give nurses opportunities in leadership positions because their contribution in decision making on improving the health sector is vital. It is evident from society that the public trusts nurses for reliable information and nurses can do a lot in improving the health sector if they get an opportunity. Despite the barriers in place that prevent nurses from involvement in decision-making, it is not too late. Other advanced practice nurses are in a very good position of coming up with methodologies of addressing issues because of the experience gained in patient -nurse communication. Nurses should not only be involved in implementation but also in formulation of policies in the medical field. In all private and public health institutions, decision-making teams should consist of representation from nurses. The government should strengthen the nursing and midwifery system to keep them motivated to deliver services effectively. Most of the hospitals have fewer nurses than they require. This leads to overworking of the available nurses and the result is reduced efficiency. Governments should recruit more nurses to balance the growing population. This is the only way personalized care to each patient can become a reality. Governments should revisit the payment models and nurses be paid on service delivery protocols. Nurses deserve a fair pay of the work they do. Governments should work on ensuring that nurses give their best in providing health care. Their payment modalities need a revisit to ensure that they earn according to the services delivered. Most hospitals have fewer nurses, a factor which leads to overworking of available nurses. These nurses work long hours at and one nurse attends more patients than they should. Overworked nurses cannot deliver their best and this greatly affects the quality of healthy care delivered. Governments and private hospitals should reconsider increasing the pay of nurses according to experience and qualification. Nurses advancing in their career academically should receive pay rise. Introduction of incentive programs in hospitals to reward the most competent nurses. These programs will motivate nurses to avoid all cases of error and this will ensure that quality health care is available to the public. Public and private organizations should put into place mentoring programs for nurses. Such programs will impart them with more skills that are necessary in addressing every day challenges in their career. Organizations should organize leadership programs for nurses to help them deliver their care efficiently. Nurses need to be competent in making decisions as leaders because this will enable them supervise other staff in hospitals and they will have the ability to coordinate activities within the hospital setting. Leaders who display leadership qualities are more effective in delivering care to patient because they can make wise decisions in critical situations and will take necessary steps even if doctors are not available. Such nurses display a great deal of independence and can work under minimal supervision and deliver the best of services. Manual record keeping and filing reduces efficiency and leads to delayed provision of services. For effectiveness, hospitals should adopt new technologies of managing knowledge to ensure fast customer service and compliance. The hospital should create programs of data management that make all the relevant information available to nurses. Through collaboration with other practitioners, nurses will have the ability to make critical decisions with the help of the available information and collaboration among other staff. This will improve the quality of services delivered to patients. Knowledge management reduces error by a great margin and this ensures that nurses follow the right procedures improving the quality of care received by the patients (Ball, 2000). Training programs for nurses on knowledge management are essential when organizations adopt information technology as these ensure sharing of quality information. Being able to share knowledge collaboratively has positive impact on services offered by an organization but poses a great risk when workers share poor information (Masters, 2005). Sharing poor information results to poor and erroneous procedures and this reduces the quality of services. Training nurses on knowledge management will not only add their efficiency but also increase their productivity. Nurses will be able to handle more cases and coordinate compliance cases in a shot time. Patients will receive prompt attendance in hospitals and cases of adverse medical effects due to errors will drop. Nurses using the knowledge management system are knowledge workers and should be innovative to utilize the available records and ideas from others to generate new information of importance in the medical practice. Availability of knowledge management programs will ensure that nurses can work effectively even from the bedside. Masters (2005) argues that reforms of any nature in the health sector should involve the nurses as they play a very crucial role in the health sector. Even though they cannot work alone and need conjunction with other practitioners and physicians to ensure that services offered are of the best quality. Nurses should be team players so that coordination of activities in the hierarchy of medical practitioners becomes easier. Healthy collaboration must exist for the hospital to be a centre of quality services. Nurses should be competitive to ensure that both prevention and treatment of diseases are effective. Training of effective teamwork is essential to ensure that nurses are more effective in cooperating to deliver the best of services to the patients. It is evident that the future of the health care sector depends greatly on the effectiveness of nurses. The role of nurses is very critical in achieving the millennium development goals on health. Provision of primary health care is essential in any society. Since nurses constitute the greatest number of medical practioners offering health care, their efficiency is important for any health system to be able to address medical issues effectively. Nurses should receive representation in decision-making because they understand the shortcomings of the health system in place. Since they interact directly with the patients, they are able to recognize methodologies that work best in addressing health issues. Therefore, governments should focus on improving the welfare of nurses to make them more efficient. Hospitals should adopt information technology to increase efficiency and reduce errors. The contribution of nurses is critical in reforming the health system. Decision makers should consider the opinion of nurses and appreciate their contribution. Governments should reconsider payment modalities of nurses to make the working environment conducive. Hospitals should organize motivational programs to motivate nurses to give their best. References Ball, J. (2000). Nursing informatics: where caring and technology meet. London: Springer. Barclay, L. (2010). Nurses should Play Greater Role in Health Policy Planning, Management. Retrieved on December 6, 2011 from http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/716344 Masters, K. (2005). Role development in professional nursing practice. New York: Jones & Barlett Learning. Ogilvie, L. and Sare, M. (2010). Strategic planning for nurses: change management in health care. New York: Jones & Barlett Learning. Sines, D., Saunders, M. and Janice, F. (2009). Community Health Care Nursing. New York: John Wiley and Sons. ) Read More