Healthcare Learning Experiences: Enhancing the Patient Experience - Essay Example

? Enhancing the Patient Experience August 8, Enhancing the Patient Experience INTRODUCTION The patient journey and challenges’ healthcare learning experiences augment textbook theories. The research delves into the journey theories. The research delves into the future paths sprouting from the journey. The patient journey lessons enrich and prepare the nursing professional to successfully hurdle all future nursing healthcare obstacles, hastening the recuperation process. The lessons from the patient journey and challenges prod the nurse to implement an evidence-based healthcare procedure. Specifically, the patient journey and challenges incorporated the actual healthcare experiences with the textbook knowledge. The experience adds a new aspect to nursing care learning. The new knowledge delves into the importance of “person-centred care” (http:learn2.open.ac.uk 2012). Further, the journey experiences convince the nurse that learning includes gathering inputs from the healthcare environment (http:learn2.open.ac.uk 2012). The inputs include the patients’ inputs. The healthcare environment indicates that the patients have different culture-based inputs. The nurse compares the patients’ inputs with current medical databases. Tiago (2011, p. 268) reiterated “With the synergies and differences between the different theories and models that analyze and predict the acceptance of technology, its explanation identifies the advantages and disadvantages associated with them as well as a clear identification of variables that interpret end-user motivation to accept IT/” Tiago (2011, p. 268) that a research of 43 Portugal medical doctors used the Electronic Medical Database system for their diagnosis and prescription activities. The doctors have different specializations. Consequently, the doctors tailor their database on their medical expertise. For example, the oncology expert keeps a cancer-related database Furthermore, the experience lessons persuade the nurse to search for references that will ensure positive outcomes from the patient-centred healthcare approach (http:learn2.open.ac.uk 2008). Positive output includes client’s receiving significant psychological benefits. Ella Stiles (2011, p. 35) theorised “To achieve best outcomes, patients must have a good understanding of the condition and should adopt a vigilant self-care approach. However, this may be difficult for patients with low health literacy because they may struggle with obtaining, understanding and applying health information.” The nurses must encourage the patients to do their share in the healing process. The nurses cannot fully implement the healing process without the patients’ voluntary implementation of the medical doctor’s prescriptions. For example, the nurses should persuade the hypertensive patients to avoid fatty foods because fatty foods trigger the hypertension attacks. In addition, the positive outputs of the patient journey learning experiences include the nurses’ gaining psychological advantages from the patient-centred hospital experiences. Arturo (Bustamante, 2011, p 1921) states “physicians with 50 percent or more Latino patients were more likely than the reference group to report inadequate time with patients, patients' inability to pay, the lack of qualified specialists in their areas, not getting timely reports from other physicians, difficulties communicating with patients, and patient noncompliance with treatment.” ‘ The quote clearly shows that the language barrier reduces the implementation of a favorable communication between the Spanish-speaking Latinos and the English-speaking healthcare professionals. The research indicated that medical professionals serving more than 50 percent Latino patients’ medical needs had lesser confidence in their ability to communicate with the Latino patients, reducing the required healthcare quality service. Further, the patient journey experiences enrich the nurses’ knowledge that the healthcare practitioners, especially the nurses, must set into motion the favorable patient-centred benefits. The benefits include spiritual uplifting and meaningful interaction with the patient. The nurse can persuade the patient that the Canadian government launched healthcare standards that companies must comply. The government requires the companies to implement nutritional standards on their products. In addition, the Canadian government required the companies to indicate the number of calories and ingredients of each food sold in the groceries and other food outlets. In addition, the restaurants and other food establishments must incorporate the calorie labels on its food menu choices. The government jumps into the obesity problem by flooding the public with information that the population should reduce their sugar-based food intact to allowable levels. Sugar contributes to the patients’ diabetes problem (Kondro, 2012, p. 490). Furthermore, the patient-centred patient journey knowledge has many favorable advantages. First, the healthcare practitioners gather and understand the historical factors of the patients’ current healthcare predicament. To ensure success, Nic Paton mentions some medical doctors have opened their secretive medical world to the nurses. The purpose is to enhance the horizon and depth of the current nursing education (Paton, 2011, p.16). Paton (2011, p. 16) insisted, “The primary work of the society is about education and so it is about making those opportunities more widely available and relevant for all. If we can broaden our membership to bring in more allied health professionals, then we will get a richer mix in terms of what we can deliver and in terms of workplace health.” For example, the healthcare practitioner learns that female patient’s overeating is the symptom of the problem, not the problem. The nurse learns that the overeating precipitated from her insecurity. The patient entertains overeating in order to appease her insecurity. The experience shows that the healthcare practitioners’ resolving the insecurity problem precipitates to correcting the overeating side effect. Likewise, the patient is updated with vital information as basis for persuading the patient to accept the current medical procedure or activity. Janet Dolgin insisted that the patient is entitled to his “informed consent” rights (Dolgin, 2010, p.97). The medical doctors’ Hippocratic ethics oath prohibits the medical doctors from hiding the medical findings and other relevant information from the patients. The medical doctors are precluded from hiding the future life expectancy and medical outlook from the patients, especially the terminally ill patients. Further, the patient journey knowledge prods the nurse to find related literature that includes Judge Carodozo’s emphasizing in the 1914 case of Schloendorff v New York Hospital that the patient has the right to consent to a proposed medical procedure or healthcare process. Scholendorff filed an assault and battery charged against the New York Hospital for conducting surgery while she was asleep. The medical doctors removed a tumor while the patient was asleep. After the surgery, the patient suffered several side effects. Schloendorff complained that she had not agreed to conduct the surgery while she was asleep. Medical malpractice insurance did not cover assault and battery charges. The 1957 case of Salgo v Leland Stanford Jr. University, California judge insisted that the medical doctor has the compulsory duty to give all findings, diagnosis, medical procedures, and other relevant information to the patient in order for the patient to give his or her informed decision to accept or reject the healthcare professional’s proposed medical procedures (Dolgin, 2010, p.97). Furthermore, the patient journey experience proves the importance of maintaining privacy during the client-professional communication process. Robert Orr (2010, p. 49) reiterated the nurses can refuse to implement nursing procedures that may violate the patients’ rights, including confidentiality of patient information divulged during the rehabilitation process. Orr (2010, p.49) insists “the right of conscience is the right of an individual to refuse to do something requested by another based on his or her own conscience or religious beliefs.” The nurse cannot force the Muslim patient to eat pork because eating pork violates the religious freedom of the Muslim patient. The nurse cannot force the patient to act or avoid an act that violates the patient’s gender rights, minority rights, or consumer rights. The current medical ethics imposes that the medical professional must recognize and implement the patients’ rights to refuse treatment or certain medical procedures. In this aspect, the patient has the right to demand certain treatments from the nurse, doctor, physical therapist, pharmacist, and other medical professionals. Likewise, the patient will eagerly open up to the nurses’ interaction with patient only if the healthcare professional assures the patient that confidentiality is prioritized. The female patient immediately trusted me when I convinced the female patient that her medical condition and personal opinion. Gaining the patient’s trust, the nurse intently listened to the patient’s inputs. Sometimes patient inputs can enhance healthcare activities (Orr, 2010, p.49). Consequently, I used the patient’s historical and family health information as to secret ingredient to catapult the current healthcare process several levels higher. For example, the patient preferred to stay at home and eat unlimited food and watch television. The journey’s communication activity included inputs that include excessive eating and being a coach potato, avoiding required fat-burning exercises, precipitated to the female patient’s obese figure. Rather, the female patient should have broken down her high impenetrable wall that cuts the world from her. The female patient should have built bridges in order to connect with a possible lover or best friend. Building bridges uses lots of energy, preventing her obesity to flagrantly crop up. The patient voiced the unbearable pressure of retaining her father’s conditional love. The father’s love depends on the patient’s keeping up with the father’s growing up standards. Subsequent implications for your practice resulting from this exploration. The future of the healthcare profession includes enhancing the patient-centred healthcare process (http:learn2.open.ac.uk 2012). First, the nurse should embark on a “carequake” journey. The journey incorporates relevant core attributes to the current healthcare procedures. The attributes contribute to the physical and mental rehabilitation of the patient. Revitalized nurse must incorporate the patients’ demographics, economic condition, and social status with the latest healthcare trends, and economic factors to level up the current healthcare performances. Further, the future includes implementing patient-based healthcare process that includes evidence-based medical procedures. The evidences include the patient’s freely and confidently gathered historical data. Without the patient’s trust, the healthcare professional may not be able to gather all relevant and reliable healthcare information needed to reduce the patients’ recuperating process. With the patient’s trust, the patient’s information may enhance the healing process (http:learn2.open.ac.uk 2012). Furthermore, the nurse must ensure that the patient-centred process should include additional inputs. One of the inputs is professional training. The healthcare procedures must include the patients’ medical history, and family’s efforts to hasten the healing process. Amanda Blackwell’s research showed the importance of the nurses’ consistent trust-laden communication with the patients (Blackwell 2012, p. 35). Blackwell literature shows that care for older patients includes resounding compassion for the patients (Blackwell 2011, p.35). The nursing literature reiterates the nurse must ensure caring for the dignity and respect of the aged patients. Care and compassion for the elderly patients must be included as priority areas of the nursing education. VERA stands for nurses’ incorporation of validation, reassurance, emotion, and activity steps in the patient-centred communication (Blackwell 2011, p.35). The breakdown or the refusal to open constructive communication lines with patients may trigger misunderstanding among some of patients. The VERA process requires nurses to decide whether to implement or reject some of the patients’ requests or demands, in an honest and respectful communication environment. Blackwell (2011, p. 35) insists Validation therapy never intends to compel a current reality in terms of dates or times. Rather, the medical professional explores the underlying meaning of the client's behaviour and speech. This approach “offers helpful communication techniques. The VERA procedure assists practitioners develop an understanding of what may appear to be confused and inappropriate behavior (Blackwell 2011, p. 35)”. In addition, the futuristic nurse must realize that the U.K. healthcare patient scene is composed of more elderly patients. The current population demographics indicate that there are more elderly residents compared to the children. Consequently, there will lesser healthcare patients after 20 years. With the current demographics, there will be lesser young nurses caring for the current elderly population. The U.K. nurse can benefit from incorporating information from Liverpool Care Pathway system to caring for the U.K. elderly patients (Tiago 2011, p.268). Further, the nurse’s journey results to gathering data that healthcare professionals have an important part in caring for patients during the terminal phase of the patients’ life (Anderson 2012, p. 42). The Royal Liverpool University Trust and the Marie Curie Centre’s local branch researched and developed the Liverpool Care Pathway system for the United Kingdom elderly population. The Pathway is specifically crafted to fill the healthcare information needs of the terminally ill patients. The research indicated that 16 percent of U.K. cancer deaths and five percent of deaths that precipitated from other medical ailment types died in hospices, homes for the aged. Furthermore, the futuristic nurse incorporates information technology to reduce the time needed to gather and exchange healthcare information. Ambinder reiterates most healthcare settings include information technology’s advantages (2012, p. 324). Ambinder insists the United States government implemented the National Cancer Policy Forum to update patients, patients’ families and friends, and healthcare professionals’ database in order to increase the current medical ailment survival statistics. The database incorporated patient inputs such as the demographics, religion, age, gender, religion, medical history, occupation, education level, related federal policy issues and related healthcare allusions. The future nursing environment includes maximizing information technology to enhance the current healthcare responsibilities (Bali 2006, p. 41). Technology includes using the internet to gather data from professional healthcare websites. Technology also includes live communication with healthcare experts from any part of the world. The nurse can upload a video of the patient’s current medical history to an expert in another country or entity. Consequently, the California medical professional can reply to the nurses’ video, message, and file uploads within one minute after reading the messages. CONCLUSION Summarizing the above analysis, the patient journey healthcare experiences boosts textbook healthcare concepts. The journey theories indicate the importance of patient-centred nursing priorities. The nurses’ future learning journeys incorporate the current female patient learning theories. Evidently, the patient journey lessons deepens and advances the nursing professional’s current textbook and practice expertise to viably triumph over all forthcoming seemingly insurmountable nursing healthcare obstructions, accelerating the patient’s building up physical and mental strength. REFERENCES: Ambinder, E 2012, ‘The Information age, cyberspace, and cancer,’ Oncology ,vol. 26 no. 4, pp. 324- 326. Anderson, A 2012, ‘Benefits of Using the Liverpool Care Pathways in End of Life Care,’ Nursing Standard, vol. 26 no. 34, pp. 42-50. Bali, R 2006, Healthcare Knowledge Management Issues, Advances and Successes, London, Springer Press. Blackhall, A 2011, ‘VERA Framework: communicating with people who have dementia,’ Nursing Standard, vol. 26 no. 10, pp. 35-39. Bustamante, A. 2011, ‘Physicians Cite Hurdles Ranging from Lack of Coverage to Poor Communication in Providing High Quality Care to Latinos,’ Health Affairs ,vol. 30 no.10, pp. 1921- 1929. Dolgin, J. 2010, ‘The Legal Development of the informed consent doctrine: past and present,’ Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, vol. 19 no. 1, pp. 97-109. Kondro, W. 2012, ‘Multiple Strategies Needed to Reduce Obesity,’ Canadian Medical Association Journal, vol. 184 no.9, pp. 490-491. Open University Module 2012, viewed 7 August, 2012, Orr, R. 2010, ‘Medical ethics and the faith facotr: The endangered rigth of conscience,’ Ethics and Medicine, vol. 26 no. 1, pp. 49-55. Paton, N. 2011, ‘Doctors Society Opens to Nurses,’ Occupational Health, vol. 63 no. 12, pp. 16 -18. Stiles, E. 2011, ‘Promoting health literacy in patients with diabetes,’ Nursing Standard , vol. 26 no. 8, pp. 35-40. Tiago, M. 2011, ‘Physician's Technology Adoption,’ The Business Review, Cambridge , vol. 18 no. 2, pp. 268-277. Read More