NURS 6053: INTERPROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONAL AND SYSTEMS LEADERSHIP- Discussion- Week 3
I’m working on a Nursing question and need guidance to help me study.
Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues
Quite often, nurse leaders are faced with ethical dilemmas, such as those associated with choices between competing needs and limited resources. Resources are finite, and competition for those resources occurs daily in all organizations.
For example, the use of 12-hour shifts has been a strategy to retain nurses. However, evidence suggests that as nurses work more hours in a shift, they commit more errors. How do effective leaders find a balance between the needs of the organization and the needs of ensuring quality, effective, and safe patient care?
In this Discussion, you will reflect on a national healthcare issue and examine how competing needs may impact the development of polices to address that issue.
To Prepare:
Review the Resources and think about the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously selected for study in Module 1.
Reflect on the competing needs in healthcare delivery as they pertain to the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously examined.
Post an explanation of how competing needs, such as the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients, may impact the development of policy. Then, describe any specific competing needs that may impact the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected. What are the impacts, and how might policy address these competing needs? Be specific and provide examples.
Resources :
https://www.nursingworld.org/coe-view-only
(This is the national healthcare/stressor we selected for study in module 1!!)
Current Healthcare Issues
According to Gerardi, Farmer, & Hoffman (2018), “the American Organization of Nurse Executives has been made to increase the proportion of nurses with a bachelor of science in nursing or higher degree to 80% by 2020.” Given this, hospitals across the nation are accepting the responsibilities of identifying and developing efficient strategies towards training and providing help for nurses to achieve a higher education in their workforce. Over the last few years, the hospital facility that I work in has practiced hiring higher educated nursing staff to attend patients as opposed to those who only obtain a high school diploma. There are flyers on many of the bulletins for those who have already been employed to be encouraged to achieve a higher degree program. For those who apply for the bachelor’s program, the facility reimburses nurses for some of their tuition costs so that they wouldn’t be discouraged to attend or drop out because of finances.
There are also programs that nurses can attend if they have already graduated with an Associates degree, which is called the fast-track diploma. This program is offered for a 15-month term and has options for both RN and BSN programs. Given that patient population is becoming more diverse, it is imperative that nurses are knowledgeable on the topics concerning their patients outside of health. For instance, to gain a standard knowledge of cultural backgrounds, religious affiliations as it relates to health options, and ethnicity differences (Marzuki, Hassan, Wichaikhum, & Nantsupawat, 2012). Nurses must possess more skills, knowledge, and competencies to deal with the challenges that arise in their field because of how the way our world changes so quickly.
Having incompetent nurses in the field can become detrimental to the healthcare facility as well as the patients who are being looked after (Marshall, E., & Broome, 2017). This is due to the poor quality of services given to patients, miscommunication, misguidance, and misunderstandings because the nurses aren’t caught up with the nursing world as it is today that a higher degree program can help them achieve. Having a demoted workforce and nurses not understanding the patient population as what it is today can prevent patients from receiving quality care, safety measures may be at stake, and untrained staff members means more likely mistakes could occur with medications, equipment operations, and so forth.
References
Gerardi, T., Farmer, P., & Hoffman, B. (2018). Moving closer to the 2020 BSN-prepared workforce goal. American Journal of Nursing, 118(2), 43–45.
Marshall, E., & Broome, M. (2017). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential leader (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
Marzuki, M. A., Hassan, H., Wichaikhum, O., & Nantsupawat, R. (2012). Continuing nursing education: best-practice initiative in nursing practice environment. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 60, 450-455.
