Nurses play an essential role in managing patients in a healthcare facility. The nursing profession requires a lot of dedication and sacrifice to ensure that they deliver quality care to patients. However, nurses face various challenges in the course of duty. Handling these challenges requires a professional approach to ensure that the healthcare system always provides quality treatment to patients. For instance, nurses face ethical dilemmas as they have to balance the requirements of the patients while operating in professional standards. In the United States, patients receive quality care, but they do not meet the healthcare expectations. The healthcare sector is ever-evolving, causing challenges to patients, thus calling for a need for intervention strategies to help nurses serve the interests of patients and the community.
Ethical challenges faced by Nurses today and their solutions
For United States citizens to enjoy optimal healthcare both as individuals and as a population, there is a need for high-quality care services within the health care domain. However, providing quality health care services, especially among nurses, does not always go according to the expectations of the health care sector. In their everyday care practice, nursing professionals are often burdened by various ethical issues during care delivery (Albarqouni et al., 2018). In the nursing profession, nurses are required to adhere to both foundational moral virtues, duties in addition to principles that are core to their line of work. Contrary to this, it is becoming challenging for nurses to hold their practice with integrity among the complicated moral pressure and choices that nurses face.
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Science versus spirituality
The entirety of healthcare delivery lies in science and results. However, it often impedes on religious and personal beliefs of various patients. For instance, there exists some religion that strictly forbade the use of medical interventions and techniques that are termed as lifesaving on patients. Although nurses often adhere to the provision of medical care to reduce pain and allow patients to concentrate on self-care, patients holding on to robust religious values and beliefs often focus on maintaining a strict set of guidelines according to their religion (Institute of Medicine, 2011). Such issues require nurses to respect the unique differences of all patients regardless of whether it is a lifestyle, religious beliefs, or value system.
Patient preferences versus nursing care requirements
In care delivery, there are many instances where disconnects occur between the preferences of patients and the obligation of nurses during care delivery. For instance, in cases where those in the nursing profession are needed to acquire the consent of a patient before treatment, they always face various issues when attending to female patients. Although nurses strive to treat their patients with dignity and respect their confidentiality, often the same cannot be said on the patient’s part. Additionally, when dealing with patients with influential or political backgrounds, nurses often face extreme stress to provide specialized medical care at the detriment of other patients (Eastman, 2014). In dealing with ethical challenges related to patient preference versus care requirements of nurses, it is essential for nurses to provide fair, appropriate, and equitable treatment to all patients.
Honesty versus Withholding of Information
Often, during care delivery, family members of patients may want to withhold medical information related to the sick member aiming at protecting their emotions. Though patients have the right to know their medical situations, it often becomes a challenge for nurses if sharing such information goes against the beliefs of the family members (Soeken, Grady, & Ulrich, 2014). Ethical standards in the nursing profession require professionals to maintain patient confidence when dealing with patients. Coping with such challenges need nurses to be truthful in their nurse-patient relationships and maintain ethical standards.
The key message of the future of nursing
In the quest to offer quality care to American citizens, individuals in the health care profession are providing nurses with solutions to issues they face during care delivery. The message covers various aspects including;
Nursing education
According to the information related to nursing education, nurses, in general, should utilize the improved system of education to acquire knowledge to promote smooth academic progression. This statement consists of several recommendations, such as increasing the percentage of nurses holding degrees in nursing to eighty percent and increasing twice the present number of those in the nursing profession with doctorates by the year 2020 (Eastman, 2014). Additionally, the recommendations include the provision of competency-based education and interprofessional education on collaboration and teamwork and increasing the variety of nurses in the current workforce force in regards to gender, ethnicity, and race.
In the health care sector, nursing is unique among healthcare personnel because it contains various paths of education. The process begins from prominent to an entry-level authorization to the tradition of nursing. Individuals have been debating on the level of knowledge and qualifications needed for the nursing profession, and competencies required for practice have continuously expanded (Nousiainen et al., 2017). The affected areas of the nursing profession include leadership, health policy, community, and public health. In general, these competencies have pushed additional stress on the curricula and system of education. Additionally, care in both community settings and hospitals have become more complicated. Nurses are required to make essential decisions linked with care delivery for weaker and bedridden patients, and additionally work with urbane lifesaving technology (Dzau et al., 2017). Moreover, those in nursing practice are required to fulfill primary care responsibilities and assist patients in taking care of their sicknesses. This action focuses on preventing the occurrence of severe care incidents plus advanced diseases. In an attempt of improving the condition and adequate medical upkeep, nurses are required to work with sophisticated technological equipment and information management systems. These basics require a higher level of education and understanding to avoid the emergence of confusion.
The healthcare sector has spent much time and effort in controversies regarding the entry-level educational requirements for those in the nursing profession. In effect, it has eroded their ability to assume leadership in healthcare reform and policy. Therefore, to promote the provision of quality care, the health care sector must agree that the Bachelor of Science in nursing must be an essential requirement to work as a nurse (Hamid, Mubarak, & Khalid, 2016). Thus, in the contemporary world of today, nursing education must be driven beyond the traditional curricula to incorporate complex relationships in addition to learning on how to manage political dynamics. Consequently, nurses in interdisciplinary care environments should always be prepared to garner efforts towards the identification of issues relating to improving care, waste, achieving established goals, and tracking quality improvement.
Since the occurrence of the significant transformations in the United States’ healthcare system and practice, the background requires robust quality educational changes for those partaking the nursing profession before, and after receiving the nursing license. This strategy involves the establishment of an improved education system aiming at improving the efficiency and competence of nursing professionals (Institute of Medicine, 2011). It ensures that current and future nursing professionals provide quality, safe, and patient-focused care. Additionally, it has to be done in all healthcare environments, especially in community, public health, and primary care sectors.
Core Competencies in the Medicine Institute
Work in interdisciplinary teams
According to the skill, nurses demand cooperation, collaboration, communication, and integrated care in groups to guarantee a constant and reliable care delivery. Barrier involved in this competency is the inability of distributing patient care functions within collaborative teams and improving the disposition and ability of nurses to cooperate (Greiner & Knebel, 2015). The best solution for this is for health care personnel to understand better the advantages accorded by significant levels of cooperation, standardization, and coordination for continued excellence, coordination, and consistency.
Provide patient-focused care
It requires identification, respect, and care about the different preferences, expected needs besides values of patients by nurses to ease pain and suffering. Moreover, there is a need for listening, informing, conversing, and educating those in need of treatment. Additionally, it requires nurses to continually administer coordinate care, advocate for the prevention of diseases, wellness, and promotion of a healthy lifestyle. Besides, it allows nurses to focus on population health and share decisions with management (Hamid, Mubarak, & Khalid, 2016). The barriers involved in performing patient center assessments is the lack of adequate, appropriate, and reliable methods to assess the effects of the intervention, and a clear definition of terms related to this competency. The best solution to this barrier is to work more on defining a universal language in addition to rules associated with effective patient-centered care.
Employ evidence-based practice
This competency requires nurses to assimilate the most active research together with clinical proficiency and patient values to provide top medical care. Additionally, it requires nurses to engage in both research and learning activities to a feasible level (Institute of Medicine, 2011). The barriers involved in evidence based-practice include; obstacles involved in realizing research findings to clinical specialists inefficient structure and point of care. Medical practices that emphasize on practical as opposed to intellectual knowledge coupled with time constraints encompassing busy health care personnel. For example, these barriers can be solved by providing significant roles for equipped clinical librarians, thus supporting healthcare personnel in setting up clinical issues and identify important clinical literature.
Utilize informatics
According to this competency, nurses are required to communicate, manage knowledge, support decision making through the use of information technology and mitigate errors during care delivery.
Apply quality improvement
Quality improvement competency requires nurses to identify errors and hazards during care delivery. This approach should be reinforced by comprehending and executing fundamental safety design principles of simplifying and standardizing the healthcare system (Hamid, Mubarak, & Khalid, 2016). Moreover, nurses should design and examine interferences to change policies and processes of medical care to improve care quality in the process, structure, and outcome regarding the needs of the patient and the community.
Conclusion
Changes in the nursing system expose professionals to challenges when handling patients. Handling these barriers requires educational, leadership, and professional intervention. Obstacles to applying quality improvement include insufficient support information infrastructure, guidance, and support in addition to eagerness from, and skeptics among medical professionals regarding the efficacy of this approach. In an attempt to curb these barriers, health care procedure should expand the experiences of factions in other sectors that have shown gains in quality by using methods of quality improvement.
References
Albarqouni, L., Hoffmann, T., Straus, S., Olsen, N. R., Young, T., Ilic, D., & Glasziou, P. (2018). Core competencies in evidence-based practice for health professionals: consensus statement based on a systematic review and Delphi survey. JAMA network open, 1(2), e180281-e180281.
Dzau, V. J., McClellan, M. B., McGinnis, J. M., Burke, S. P., Coye, M. J., Diaz, A., & Henney, J. E. (2017). Vital directions for health and health care: priorities from a National Academy of Medicine initiative. Jama, 317(14), 1461-1470.
Eastman, P. (2014). IOM: Education of Health Professionals Needs Overhaul: Needed: More Rigorous Testing, Better Interdisciplinary Teamwork. Oncology Times, 25 (11), 74-76. doi:https://journals.lww.com/oncology-times/Fulltext/2003/06100/IOM__Education_of_Health_Professionals_Needs.29.aspx
Greiner, A. C., & Knebel, E. (2015). The Core Competencies Needed for Health Care Professionals. In Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality. Washington, DC: National Academic Press.
Hamid, S., Mubarak, H., & Khalid, S. (2016, July 26). Ethical Issues Faced by Nurses during Nursing Practice in District Layyah, Pakistan. Diversity and Equality in Healthcare . Retrieved from http://diversityhealthcare.imedpub.com/ethical-issues-faced-by-nurses-during-nursingpractice-in-district-layyah-pakistan.php?aid=10616
Institute of Medicine. (2011). The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. Washington, DC: National Academic Press.
Nousiainen, M. T., Caverzagie, K. J., Ferguson, P. C., Frank, J. R., & ICBME Collaborators. (2017). Implementing competency-based medical education: What changes in curricular structure and processes are needed?. Medical teacher, 39(6), 594-598.
Soeken, K., Grady, C., & Ulrich, C. M. (2014). Everyday Ethics: Ethical Issues and Stress in Nursing Practice. J Adv Nurs, 66 (11).
