Nurses and the Affordable Care Act - Coursework Example

Nurses and the Affordable Care Act Since its introduction in the American healthcare sector, the Affordable Care Act by President Obama has been criticised, appraised and assessed based on various dimensions. One of those dimensions was the impact this new legislation would impose on nurses, besides other medical professionals. As argued by Wakefield (2010), this new regime offers numerous benefits to nurses those in turn increases their scope for better growth in the professional domain, without inhibiting their interests, incentives or motivational needs.

A major advantage, which the nurses can obtain from this legislation, relates to funding. For instance, through this legislation, the government intends to encourage nursing education and mitigate shortages of nursing professionals in many of its states offering them with loan facilities as well as the opportunity to get a proportion of their loan cancelled. According to Wakefield (2010), the legislation also offers a wider opportunity for deserving nurses to appear in leadership positions within the sector.

In the words of Davis, Abrams and Stremikis (2011) too, “the Affordable Care Act invests $1.5 billion over 2011–2015 for the National Health Service Corps to provide scholarships and loan forgiveness for primary care physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants practicing in health professional shortage areas.”Applying the above discussed facts of Affordable Care Act, it becomes apparent that the government is taking realistic and effective measures to encourage participation of nurses in almost every sphere of the healthcare sector in America.

This would help in dealing with the major issues prevalent in the domain. At the onset, it will address the long-lasting inhibition amid the nurses that they lack adequate opportunities to be in the leadership position of the industry. On the other hand, it is expected to ensure diversity as well as uniformity in the trend of delivering nursing services to the population in rural areas of the nation, apart from those regions suffering from shortage of these professionals. Therefore, with greater growth opportunities and financial aids, it gets justified that the new legislation serves with a greater voice and diverse set of choices to the nurses influencing the future of these professionals as a group as well as individually.

ReferencesDavis, K., Abrams, M., & Stremikis, K. (2011). How the Affordable Care Act will strengthen the nations primary care foundation. J Gen Intern Med, 26(10), 1201–1203.Wakefield, M. K. (2010). Nurses and the Affordable Care Act: New legislation gives nurses a greater voice. AJN, 110(9), 11.