How the Practice of Nursing Is Expected to Shift and Grow
As America’s healthcare industry is perceived as one of those that need improvement, healthcare members will be affected owing to the needed transformation. The United States healthcare occupies 37rd place in the world (Taylor & Samuel, 2012). It means that nurses will not be left unaffected since there is a need and room for improvement. Therefore, the growth and shift in the practice of nursing is expected to become a community-based practice.
It is important to note that nurses are the most important tool for the approach of care administering medication to patients (McAllister, Prester, & Cooley, 2007). In the workbook Medical home practice-based care coordination: A workbook, the authors describe tools needed for a primary care practice to develop their capacity. There are such tools as a framework for care coordination, position description of a care coordinator, definition of logical sequence of care coordination and strategies on how to protect staff members’ time in and out of work.
As the United States government sets to restructure its healthcare system in order to balance the infrastructure, more nurses in hospitals will be replaced by machines, equipment and doctors. Thus, it is important for nurses to know how to treat patients outside the hospital environment and make them feel free and safe that they will receive treatment.
A shortage of nurses has a profound negative impact on any healthcare system. Currently, the present nursing population is old and aging nurses who are approaching retirement age. The shortage of over 300,000 nurses worldwide is expected to grow to over 800,000 in the next 15-20 years. It means that the industry has no choice except for recruiting more nurses and practicing shifts and expands. Thus, nurses should be prepared for this stage.
The practice of nursing is expected to grow as more men are becoming nurses, contradicting the traditional belief that nurses are usually women. Nowadays, nursing is offered as a second degree to those who already have carriers in other fields. The reason is that the population is aging, times are changing, more nurses are needed and nevertheless people are skeptical about this tendency.
The growth in the nursing spectrum has allowed employers to create flexible working hours that allow them to manage their work and leisure activities. Such shift is only being enjoyed by the incoming population as it is new and was not encouraged traditionally.
In the nearest future, employment is expected to grow as the ratio of nurses to patients is expected to grow. The number of inpatients is seemingly stable as patients get discharged quickly. Moreover, procedures are done on the outpatient scale both on and out of the hospital premises. Consequently, nurses should be ready to spend most of their time out of the hospital and do routine checkups and follow-ups on the patients.
In conclusion, evidence-based practice can be argued to make nurses more autonomous by replacing them with more practical and research work prescriptions. Despite this evidence and statistics, nurses will not be eradicated but shifted out of the hospital in order to make them closer to their patients and the community in general. With the rapid improvement of facilities like the possibility of doing surgery, rehabilitation and counseling on the same day the job for nurses will be shifted to the community.
References
McAllister, J. W., Prester, E., & Cooley, W. C. (2007). Medical home practice-based care coordination: A workbook. Greenfield, New Hampshire: Center for Medical Home Improvement. Retrieved from http://www.medicalhomeimprovement.org/pdf/MHPracticeBasedCC-Workbook_7-16-07.pdf
Taylor, A., & Samuel, B. (2012, June 29). These are the 36 countries that have better healthcare systems than the US. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/best-healthcare-systems-in-the-world-2012-6?op=1