Nurses New Roles in Change

¶ … Evolving U.S. Health Care System The Role Nurses Will Play in the Changing Healthcare Landscape Nurses have a key role in the perpetually changing U.S. healthcare system and will be responsible for implementing many of the changes on both a strategic and a tactical level. For nurses to be the most effective in the wave of changes that will ensue, nurses first need to understand the opportunities that are present and how they can create solutions to achieve better patient outcomes at more reasonable costs.

However, with the changes that are expected to occur, nurses will have a greater ability to prevent diseases in the community, provide chronic care management to aging patients, treat a more diverse population, offer end-of-life care that emphasizes comfort and compassion, and many more roles that are beneficial to the community. Nurses will now have the ability to provide expanding access to care which will work to improve the availability and the quality of health care to many members of the community that were previously disenfranchised.

Nursing led innovation like nurse-managed health clinics, home visiting programs for low-income mothers and the Transitional Care Model are some of the innovations that nurses can take part in the new environment.

Mid-level healthcare providers are taking on an extremely important role in the health care system with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and these providers will help to move many of the nursing jobs from the acute care hospital facilities, into the community through a variety of expanded practices that can focus more on routine and preventative care for individuals and families.

In the new environment that emerges, nurses will have to take on more of a leadership role in many situations that will require that a nurse-leader be competent in a wide range of new skills. For example, nurse-leaders will have to learn to delegate effectively and monitor the progress of their team's ability to successfully completed tasks and achieve a wide range of organizational objectives.

Many experts agree that delegation is an essential element of the management process because much of the work accomplished by managers (first-, middle-, and top-level managers) occurs not only through their own efforts but also through those of their subordinates (Marquis & Huston, 2011). Therefore, as nurses move from roles, such as in acute care settings, to roles more embedded in the community, they will undoubtedly need to learn many new skills such as this.

If nurses can establish themselves as leaders in their new roles in community health, there are many potential benefits on different levels to be gained. One specific area of improvement could come from the reliance on the crowded emergency department. Many homeless and low-income individuals often rely on the emergency department (ED) as their primary health care source because they are not able to access alternative healthcare and use the emergency department (ED) as their primary health care source (Savage, Lindsell, Gillespie, Lee, & Corbin, 2008).

Furthermore, many of these low-income patients are not receiving the ideal level of care in the ED and are often overlooked in this department so that the staff can focus on more.