Needs Assessment Nursing Education

Needs Assessment

Introduction

The educational needs for a practicing nurse are ever-changing proportionate to external factors such as the evolving technologies, geopolitical area of practice, economic issues, etc. Therefore, nurses must always keep up with the latest and trending issues to perform their duties efficiently. However, given the symbiotic relationship between healthcare systems and providers of essential services such as the technologies used, medicine. Therefore, there is a need for a professional management team tasked with coordinating the procurement processes; therefore, this essay introspects into the needs assessment for an experienced "contracts manager."

Discrepancy Analysis

Notably, the daily tasks of a nurse revolve around using external entities, technologies, drugs, and even knowledge. However, it becomes challenging when one wants to adopt new strategies conscious of the operating ones. This creates a dilemma and ethical breach of contracts with the providers, thus limiting one's true potential. Therefore, Strang's (2017) affirmation of the importance of partaking in a needs assessment as a critical endeavor that provides direction for the organization in terms of management and utilizing the resources at their disposal is factual.

Needs Assessment Logic

Desired Status

Streamlining the ethical and legal process gives practicing nurses the opportunity of performing their mandates of being a "knowledgeable and compassionate professional nurse that truly makes a difference in patients' lives through providing holistic nursing care" (Rischer, 2020). Thus, using a needs assessment, the nursing fraternity can introspect the dire needs of professional contract managers.

Actual Status

The current dilemma of practicing nurses not knowing the limiting factors to the use of their knowledge, equipment, and drugs has drastically reduced the performance of nurses, thus the low quality of care. Therefore, in alignment with the "CMBOK" framework for sustainable changes, a needs assessment is pertinent to correct the adverse effects (Change Management Institute, 2017).

Understanding the Gap

A nursing profession's need for "CMBOK" is pertinent to their study and practice as not only does it provides more retrospect into ethical and legal issues related to their daily routine. But it also dissuades them from legal entanglements resulting from breach of contracts. McDonald and Then concurs with such pertinence by connoting, "Understanding ethics and law in health care is an essential part of nurses' and midwives' professional standards. Moreover, it equips readers with the ability to recognize and address legal and ethical issues that will arise in their professional practice." (McDonald & Then, 2021).

Needs Assessment and Total Design

Contractual mishaps lead to a demotivated staff not being willing to partake in complex or extra activities. As a result, nurses are not able to provide quality care to the patients. Notably, contractual management is not an individual problem, rather a problem facing most healthcare facilities; therefore, an issue that must be solved.

Administering the Needs Assessment Objectives

Emotional and psychological ravaging is a common phenomenon among nurses, given their ecosystem and the physical energy they put in their work. Such is characterized by decreased emotional and psychological tolerances for others (colleagues and patients) and reduced efficiency, resulting in negligent errors (Kinston & Rosser, 1974). Moreover, most such errors are attributed to work overloads given the number of professional staff in the healthcare facility; poor or lack of equipment forcing them to think outside the box; conflicts of value; and the absence of moral and legal guiding entities and frameworks (Young et al., 2008). Therefore, to understand their dilemmas, a needs assessment personality needs to observe the nurses in their day-to-day professional activities with patients. Such is because a vital aspect of nursing is determined in the experimental clinical setups and the treatment procedures one gives. As a result, it is essential that when incorporating the needs assessment changes, nurses be re-introduced to their caring obligations while at the same time providing mentorship to them.

Importantly, irrespective of the errors that might have occurred due to contractual mishaps, it is essential that the health facility follows up with patients and stakeholders affected by a nurse's actions. Such can be done through eliciting their input on the usage, care, and communication abilities that exist between, for instance, the providers of services and the healthcare facility. This aligns with helping both professionals and nurses in practicum begin their nursing careers, and become independent qualified practitioners. Nurse educators, therefore, must evaluate the student needs using many of the same skills and methods used in assessing patients. This is important as it provides the educators with nurses' overall capabilities and knowledge gap, thus knowing where to start, where to focus, and how to customize training and support. Equally important, it is essential to introspect the potential nurse's competencies during the recruitments through a structured checklist form. Such forms reflect the general capabilities of a nurse even before they start to work.

Additionally, although the concept of self-reporting is unfathomable amongst many practitioners, assessing one's skillsets using structured questions allows a more accurate picture of professional nurses to see and carry themselves through a skills checklist. Also, Interviews can suffice. For instance, asking both professionals and nurses in practicum their expectations from their experience, professional needs, accomplishment plans, and how they want to grow their careers. It gives a deeper personal and macro-perspective view of their professional and individual needs, thus mentoring them in a positive direction. It is also essential to seek advice from former instructors and managers about their evaluations to have had experiences with the nurses. This can be done through questionnaires with emails or personally questioning skills they thought befitted the students.  Finally, the nurses need to be observed in action to get a sense of their human capacity and risk averseness.