Increasingly Evolving Models of Nursing and Patient Care Delivery

Evolving Models of Nursing and Patient Care Delivery Globally there is a need for health reforms owing to the rising costs of health care, rise in chronic illnesses affecting the masses, and aging populations. To meet the need for health reforms nursing practitioners should take the lead, fully using their skills and capabilities in helping draft and implement health policies. This might involve nurses assuming leadership roles or even entrepreneurship roles.

Even though nursing practitioners form the largest group of health care professionals, their scope of practice within the overall healthcare sector is often restricted. This need not be the case. Nurses can play important roles in enhancing healthcare services in cost effective ways. However, for this to be achieved there is a need to see nurses as equal partners in the provision of health care services.

The best way to grow and restructure the field of nursing within the entire health sector is to re-conceptualize and expand the roles played by nursing practitioners. Doing this can help achieve more positive results by improving access, value and the quality of education and training offered in nursing schools (Richard, 2011). The goal of improving access and quality of training is to increase the capacity of the nation's nursing workforce so as to adequately address the issues related to healthcare.

Nursing professionals are usually assigned to: enhance access to primary healthcare and wellness services for peoples of all ages; to provide primary healthcare services to individuals who are medically under-served or exposed populations without considering the patient's insurance or the socioeconomic status; and to serve as clinical trainers (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2007).

The field of nursing is however growing rapidly and future reports on the profession should focus on the role of IT with regards to provision of healthcare services and as a tool for making tough choices and for documenting clinical records. Effective cooperation between different professionals within the health care sector can only be best achieved in this day and age through successfully integrating IT systems into the healthcare domain.

Restructured multidisciplinary teams with nurses leading by example will be more effective through embracing technology, for instance, the utilization of remote biometric tools for monitoring patients' vital signs. Other clinical processes that can be enhanced through integrating IT systems include: the planning of care, issuing of reports and medication reconciliation (Richard, 2011).

Nurses' Viewpoint According to feedback from some of the nurses, there is a chance that the government and other policymakers in the health sector can reform the sector to make it more accessible, seamless and to offer higher quality services. However, this can only be done by assuring that all care is evidence-based and patient-centred. In this way, health outcomes can be improved significantly and meaningfully. This kind of reform can be achieved through restructuring/remodelling the provision of healthcare, especially the field of nursing.

Some of the recommendations to remodel the nursing profession include: ensuring that nursing practitioners can practice to the full scope of their training and education; improving nursing education; providing more opportunities for nurses to get into leadership roles within the health sector and also allowing them to be equal partners in the restructuring and reforming process; and lastly improving evidence collection for workforce-planning and decision- making (Ely, 2015).

According to IOM, the nursing profession has the potential to fill the gap between coverage and access and that this can be done by allowing nurses to practice to the full of extent of their training and education. Nurses are important in reducing infection rates, significantly reducing medication errors and facilitating the transition of patients from their hospital beds back to their homes (Institute of Medicine (U.S.), 2011). Despite the many roles which nursing professionals handle with pride and aplomb, they are besieged with a myriad of challenges.

For instance, many nurses fear that even though patient numbers are increasing, hospitals are not willing to add more staff so as to ensure that the quality of care provided in such settings remains high and that the existing staff is not overworked. An important aim of the health care reform law is to emphasise on quality. Thus, the best hospitals in this new era for healthcare will be those that have enough employees to prevent running into issues with the centres for Medicaid and Medicare Services (Richard, 2011).

Nurses' roles are designed to be consistent all through the patient encounter. The nurse the patient sees each day is available prior to admissions and after discharge, too. This is actually different than anything we have seen earlier on. If we closely assess this work, we recognize that ARNs have considerably contributed to enhanced quality and patient satisfaction. The attending registered nurse is simply among the several new roles in an evolving healthcare system.

These new roles are empowering the nurses to greatly contribute in improvement of individual patient encounters and population health as well as reducing costs. Nurses in new roles are achieving as much through minimizing unnecessary and expensive hospital readmissions and avoidable medical mistakes, offering more cost-effective, more suitable, and more patient-focused primary care in the community-based settings, and other related issues.

Presently, nurses are playing evolving roles in managing care from several providers, coordinating caseloads of patients having intensive care requirements, and assisting patients' transition out of hospitals into their homes are other supportive environments. They are functioning as "health coaches" and in other ways to prevent sickness and encourage wellness. In addition, they are charting new paths in emerging fields such as informatics, telehealth, genomics and genetics, and as leaders and scientists in the society.

Traditional RNs and APRNs (advanced practice registered nurses) in the meantime are playing expanded roles as the healthcare system changes to satisfy the new emerging needs. Once seen as subservient and subordinate, nurses are currently working as full and important partners on interdisciplinary healthcare teams. APRNs are starting nurse-headed primary care centres and functioning independently (without the supervision of a doctor) in more and more states and novel settings, like big-box stores and retail pharmacies (Nurses Take on New and Expanded Roles in Health Care, 2015).

Medical homes, also known as the patient-centred medical home, are basically a multidisciplinary team approach to care in an office setting which sees the patient as a partner in health care. Physicians employ RNs, APRNs, social workers as well as certain specialists and therapists, most of who make home visits to the patients. The RNs occupy an important position in the team, involving patients in their own care and managing that care. The National Nursing Centre Consortium is advocating the federal government assign more APRN-led clinics.

Nurses ought to be capable of officially recognizing as well as sanctioning them and increase reimbursement to them. According to Hansen-Turton, retail clinics, for instance, those found on pharmacy chains like Walgreens or CVS and large retailers like Wal-Mart or Target, which house a pharmacy are 95% staffed by nurse practitioners and provide fast, accessible, efficient, cost-effective and high quality care. Various higher volume clinics also employ RNs for health screenings and flu shots (Nursing -- A new paradigm.