Future Development of Nursing Needs to Address.

¶ … future development of nursing needs to address. However, it is possible to stratify these issues into ones which are the most pressing at this particular point in time -- to effectively coalesce some of the minor issues and align them with larger ones so that the most salient ones are addressed first. Perhaps the most eminent of these for quite some time is the shortage of nursing. This issue has only become exacerbated in the wake of the actualization of the Affordable Care Act, in which there is a shortage of all health care professionals. Another nursing issue that appears equally important is the facilitation of the environment in rendering the most effective care. This particular issue relates to the general shift going on in the health care model effected within the United States, in which it is advisable and more efficacious to utilize approaches that emphasize wellness in a preventative effort, as opposed to simply spending millions and billions of dollar on services which could have easily been prevented at a fraction of a cost.

It is extremely noteworthy that these issues directly correlate to some of the values that are, and always have been, at the core of the concept of nursing. Many of these values have been heightened now due to the immediacy of the Affordable Care Act and its goals. The subsequent quotation provides a succinct summary of these values, and alludes to their relationship to these primary issues for the future of nursing development.

To improve the health of the public and reduce health care costs, the foundation of the health system must be remade into one that focuses on health promotion and wellness, disease prevention and chronic care management. Acute care must use fewer resources, be safer and produce better outcomes (Mason et al., 2012, p. 1).

Although the authors issued this statement in the context of the Affordable Care Act, there is no mistaking the core values of nursing elucidated within it and their relationship to the issues of the nursing shortage and the need to utilize the environment when administering care to patients. Efficacious management of acute and chronic care are certainly priorities for nursing -- utilizing environmental factors related to a patient's surroundings can buttress both of these values. Promoting healthy lifestyles and living is something that is at the root of the fundamental concept of nursing, and is one of the key reasons that more nurses are needed in order to deliver services that can transform this value into direct action.

Actually, utilization of the environment is one of the tools in which nursing is conducted which directly relates to the idea that nurses need to define themselves and their work and their relationships to individuals and populations. Individuals and populations exist at a number of different levels related to the environment which may be stratified according to nation, urban or rural environment. The environment is also directly related to the surrounding atmosphere in which people choose to practice wellness (ANA, 2010, p. 11) in or have available to them as they convalesce from some particular ailment. Fairly recent developments in nursing (Kleffel, 2006, p.106) allude to the fact that there is a return to the traditional ecocentric environmental paradigm in which there is a "holistic approach of oneness with a living planet, harmony, balance, interconnectedness, and transcendence) (Kleffel, 2006, p.97). By choosing to recognize relationships between the general treatment of the planet and its effects on individuals, nurses are defining themselves as universal stewards of people and the environment which spawns them.