The Masters Prepared Nurse - Essay Example

The CEO here is unusual and forward-thinking. He has already banned the hiring of smokers and does urine tests on employees for nicotine. He presently wants a policy to ban hiring people who are obese but the law will not yet allow him to do that.

Things like potato chips have been banned from the hospital vending machines. However, Cleveland Clinic has produced the most cost-efficient care in the United States in the last two years. They are nearly 50% below everyone else's costs. Clinic physicians work on a fixed salary and yearly contracts. On the other hand, their business is so good because their medicine is so good. 39,309 patients from within the United States and 2,380 patients from other countries were transferred to the hospital for cardiac care alone.

They fly them all there on their own fleet of helicopters. They do not ask what insurance they have, everyone is treated the same. Their reputation alone, however, assures them a steady stream of well-paying patients. This hospital is a picture of what healthcare will have to become in order to fix healthcare. Nurses will have jobs that are not necessarily the same in any way. Everything needs to be streamlined and functioning more efficiently and nursing is no exception. To assure that nursing is ready to lead into the field with so many changes, they must be able to merge theory, practice, and research (McEwen & Wills, 2007).

Nursing theory, nursing practice, and nursing science must work together and there must be leaders who can use all of the principles from the three to educate and train other nurses. The Cleveland Clinic as described in the article is the future frontier of medicine. It will come sooner than is thought. Masters-prepared nurses are the future frontier of nursing (Lukosius, Dicenso, Browne et.al., 2004) and professional development. It is the nurse who is prepared to ask questions about current practices and then develop new nursing knowledge, as well as organized and improve the delivery of that practice (Lukosius, et.al., 2004).

Like the hospital talked about, that has extended its scope of care, so nursing must extend its scope of practice. Leadership becomes extremely important in this type of atmosphere and the Masters' level nurse is prepared with the understanding of transformational leadership, collaboration, and organizational development, all of which will be needed to make these changes. With these skills will also be the need for the skill of thinking and writing at the Masters's level. Leadership will not be passed down, it will have to be pursued.

The Masters's level nurse is clear thinking, able to evaluate evidence, able to do a comparative analysis, able to use clinical experience to validate literature, identifies gaps in the literature, and is able to develop an argument. All of these skills will be necessary for the leadership needed in the new healthcare arena(Fowler, 2007) In conclusion, there are many massive changes that have been occurring and continue to occur in healthcare. However, the Cleveland Clinic shows us that the changes coming will be greater and more rapid than in the past.

Quality, efficient healthcare does not just happen, it has to be planned, taught, and implemented. The Masters's level nurse will be uniquely qualified to step forward and help drive the forces of change. This nurse will be prepared for the leadership and educational role of a challenging new future for healthcare.