Professional Development Assignment

Professional Development Assignments: (60 points)
There is considerable evidence that many of the new medical technologies are used inappropriately, to generate income. What patient protections against inappropriate diagnostic and other procedures should be considered?
In spite of nursing’s vital importance to hospitals, nurses face excessive paperwork, managerial responsibilities, and supervision of lesser-trained aides — tasks that require an inordinate amount of time spent on functions other than direct patient care. These frustrations, combined with long work hours, stagnant salaries, and other difficulties, have resulted in fewer entrants to schools of nursing and increasing numbers of nurses leaving the profession. Discuss possible solutions to this growing problem.
Do providers in the health care system recognize a broader social mission than addressing the needs of only those individuals who achieve access to their services? Elaborate.
Each response should be 500-1000 words
APA formatting required
Although each response is a separate essay of 500-1000 words, all responses should be combined into a single document for submission

SOLUTION

Professional Development Assignment

Response 1

Patient protection Act that was enacted by President Obama in 2010 clearly outlined the various protections that were supposed to be upheld at all costs for the purpose of safeguarding the patients from any actions that might lead to jeopardy of their health safety (Bransford, 2003). In spite of the quoted Act having multiple clauses touching on the different areas that needed protections, they bottom-line remains that this Act was extremely clear and precise on its assertion that patients’ health should always be protected through promoting and advocating for patient safety practices within nursing profession.

Integrating this explanation to query 1, one would say that the patient protection procedure which should be considered would be patient health safety in relation to hospital-acquired illnesses and injuries. As the introductory part of the query suggests, some of the new technologies within nursing practice have been used by health care providers wrongly when performing a diagnosis and thus, exposing the patients to health risks.

Adoption of a new technology requires retraining of employees (nursing staff) in order to acquaint them with necessary skills required to use such tech-sophisticated new equipment for the diagnosis purposes. Therefore, the act of implementing a new equipment in diagnosing process might lead to risks of the patient being wrongly diagnosed with a disease which is not true, and in turn being prescribed for wrong therapy and medications.

Such occurrences might lead to other worst case scenarios like deaths among the patients. Also, lowering of body immunity is another thing related to use of wrong medication since what is induced into the body system is not working as expected but rather destroying the cells that protect the human body from contracting any illnesses. Hence, the patient protection procedure to consider would be patient safety.

The hospital-acquired illnesses are mainly associated with poor health care service delivery systems which are presented by the nursing staff. For example, the quoted practice about the use of new technology wrongly in the diagnosis process might lead to acquisition of such diseases or injuries. In cases where a health practitioner uses sophisticated equipments such MRI to perform whole body scan and it ends up being the wrong application of the technology, this would lead to other complexities acquired during the scanning error presented since the rays that pass or penetrate through the patient’s body might cause other side effects if not well controlled.

Therefore, one would be justified to consider the hospital-acquired illness patient protection procedures. All doctors and nurses should ensure that the patient protection procedures that are developed upon such hospital-based occurrences are strictly followed when it comes to safeguarding the patients’ health. The use of new technologies adopted in nursing practice should always be initiated after all the medical staffs have been educated and trained on how to implement the use the specified technologies. Hence, this is why one would propose that the health care providers should often consider the patient protection procedures that fight against hospital-acquired illnesses.

Response 2

On evaluating the case presented on query 2, one would propose several solutions to counter the issue on excessive paperwork, supervision of lesser-trained aides, and managerial responsibilities. For the excessive paperwork, one would propose that the nursing practice should adopt new technologies presented in the contemporary world such as use EHRs (electronic health records) that reduce the paper workload.

Adoption of such technologies would reduce the practitioner’s burden on manually recording and retrieving patient medical history files whenever they are needed. In such solutions, the practitioners would have a humbled increased time to interact with and administer treatment comfortably without rushing due to the limited service window per patient.

The time spend retrieving a patients records file and taking it to the respective physician who uses it fir diagnosis purposes is a lot, but with these new technologies like the EHRs or EMRs the information is instantaneously accessed from a different remote locations of a health facility. Therefore, this technology makes the records retrieval a swift process and in turn saving a lot of time which can be used to attend to patients’ health needs.

Also, such solutions would help reduce the excessive paperwork required in storing the patient health information for future referencing simply because the proposed technology stores all the information in a single hard disc which is of the size of a palm of hand.

Implementing what is referred to as shared governance in nursing practice might help the practitioners working in managerial positions to reduce the supervisory roles that nurse managers have to implement on a daily basis (Swihart, 2011). In this particular type of leadership, the overall nurse managers involve the junior nurses in running the managerial roles by delegating them the different tasks expected of them.

Also, authorizing the specific junior employees to act on manager’s behalf by using his or her power would help reduce the management and supervisory roles that managers in nursing have to implement. Involving the employees in governing others and themselves would help in distributing the manager’s roles to other individuals who are often considered as capable of doing them in managers’ absentia. Thus, shared governance passes the roles to subordinate workers through passing authority to them to act as nurse manager representatives.

Training of new nurses in the health care field seem to consume a lot of precious time that could be used to attend to patient health needs. Registered nurses and nurse managers are the individuals obligated with training these new recruits in the nursing profession. In order to end this issue about manager’s supervisory role on untrained or less trained aides, the managers should either advocate for three month pre-employment training programs for all those who might want to join any health care facility and work as a care provider.

In this case, all fresh graduates in nursing will have to undergo a pre-employment training program in order to attain the required skills and knowledge on how to operate independently within the health care setting. Also, ensuring that all the new recruits are well trained during the selection and recruitment processes would be another strategy sound enough to reduce the supervisory roles on less trained aides.

Response 3

A review of the working relationships existing among health care providers and the foundation, from which they operate on, this indicates that majority of the care providers are health professionals who recognize the broader social mission laid before them. The nursing practice has different nursing boards in which the practitioners identify with in accordance to the region and patient population they serve.

It is through these nursing boards that the nursing regulations, rules, ethics, and standards are set and enforced in the respective health care institutions one might be working. The nursing practice goals guiding these standards, ethics, rules and regulations are service to all, irrespective of the race, sex, origin, social economic statuses, and literacy level the patients might exhibit in the health care context.

Therefore, the fact that the nurse practitioners follow these pre-determined and set standards and rules, this means that the health care providers are always observant and recognizing the broader social mission in nursing practices. As much as one would say that care providers are often compelled to serve only those people who can access their health services, this does not mean that they do not care and recognize the broader social mission set for them as health professionals.

Thus, the aforementioned standards and regulations are inclined to guide the medical experts in providing care to all types of patients so long as the needs presented are in their area of expertise and capability. The routine practice presented by nurses about serving all the patients who come seeking for their medical assistance, this indicates that these professionals are out there to serve and protect all from prevalent health issues.

Nurses and doctors always adhere to the nursing career entry-oaths which allegedly mandate them to serve all the populations which present health problems. An oath is something that binds one to the swearing words he or she said during an inauguration transition phase and they are expected to stick to and honor it at all costs and with their lives.

The same technique applies to nurses and doctors before they are certified and initiated as registered full accredited health care providers. They have to swear that they will serve all the populations and persons irrespective of their races, social economic status, body parts functionalities, and gender. Therefore, it would be absolutely right to pose an assertion that health care providers always recognize the broader social mission of the nursing practice which expects of them to provide their services to anybody, from anywhere, and at any time.

The tendencies of serving only those who can access the health care services is founded on the fact that nurses will only serve those who come forth and present their health needs. The practitioners do not have time to go door to door looking for those who have health issues in order to for them to be said t have served the greater and broader mission of nursing health care. Thus, it is justified to say that they always focus on the broader mission.

References

Bransford, H. (2003). Patient protections in managed care: hearing before the committee on ways and. Place of publication not identified: Diane Pub Co.

Swihart, D. (2011). Shared governance: a practical approach to transform professional nursing practice. Danvers, MA: HCPro.

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