WU NURS 6053Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues Paper
WU NURS 6053Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues Paper
Discussion: Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues
Quite often, nurse leaders are faced with ethical dilemmas, such as those associated with choices between competing needs and limited resources. Resources are finite, and competition for those resources occurs daily in all organizations. WU NURS 6053Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues Paper
For example, the use of 12-hour shifts has been a strategy to retain nurses. However, evidence suggests that as nurses work more hours in a shift, they commit more errors. How do effective leaders find a balance between the needs of the organization and the needs of ensuring quality, effective, and safe patient care?
In this Discussion, you will reflect on a national healthcare issue and examine how competing needs may impact the development of polices to address that issue.
To Prepare:
- Review the Resources and think about the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously selected for study in Module 1.
- Reflect on the competing needs in healthcare delivery as they pertain to the national healthcare issue/stressor you previously examined.
By Day 3 of Week 3
Post an explanation of how competing needs, such as the needs of the workforce, resources, and patients, may impact the development of policy. Then, describe any specific competing needs that may impact the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected. What are the impacts, and how might policy address these competing needs? Be specific and provide examples.
By Day 6 of Week 3
Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days by providing additional thoughts about competing needs that may impact your colleagues’ selected issues, or additional ideas for applying policy to address the impacts described.
Submission and Grading Information
Grading Criteria
To access your rubric:
Week 3 Discussion Rubric
Post by Day 3 and Respond by Day 6 of Week 3
To participate in this Discussion:
6053Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues RESOURCES:
Marshall, E., & Broome, M. (2017). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential leader (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
- Chapter 2, “Understanding Contexts for Transformational Leadership: Complexity, Change, and Strategic Planning” (pp. 37–62)
- Chapter 3, “Current Challenges in Complex Health Care Organizations: The Triple Aim” (pp. 63–86)
Auerbach, D. I., Staiger, D. O., & Buerhaus, P. I. (2018). Growing ranks of advanced practice clinicians—Implications for the physician workforce. New England Journal of Medicine, 378(25), 2358–2360. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1801869
Gerardi, T., Farmer, P., & Hoffman, B. (2018). Moving closer to the 2020 BSN-prepared workforce goal. American Journal of Nursing, 118(2), 43–45. doi:10.1097/01.NAJ.0000530244.15217.aa
Jacobs, B., McGovern, J., Heinmiller, J., & Drenkard, K. (2018). Engaging employees in well-being: Moving from the Triple Aim to the Quadruple Aim. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 42(3), 231–245. doi:10.1097/NAQ.0000000000000303
Norful, A. A., de Jacq, K., Carlino, R., & Poghosyan, L. (2018). Nurse practitioner–physician comanagement: A theoretical model to alleviate primary care strain. Annals of Family Medicine, 16(3), 250–256. doi:10.1370/afm.2230
Palumbo, M., Rambur, B., & Hart, V. (2017). Is health care payment reform impacting nurses’ work settings, roles, and education preparation? Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(6), 400–404. doi:10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.11.005
Park, B., Gold, S. B., Bazemore, A., & Liaw, W. (2018). How evolving United States payment models influence primary care and its impact on the Quadruple Aim. Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, 31(4), 588–604. doi:10.3122/jabfm.2018.04.170388
https://human-resources-health.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s12960-016-0154-3
Poghosyan, L., Norful, A., & Laugesen, M. (2018). Removing restrictions on nurse practitioners’ scope of practice in New York state: Physicians’ and nurse practitioners’ perspectives. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 30(6), 354–360. doi:10.1097/JXX.0000000000000040
Ricketts, T., & Fraher, E. (2013). Reconfiguring health workforce policy so that education, training, and actual delivery of care are closely connected. Health Affairs, 32(11), 1874–1880. doi:10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0531
Discussion: Review of current healthcare issues
Technology is one of the most important issues in healthcare. Over the past few decades, the healthcare industry has been under tremendous pressure to embrace new communication, information processing, and treatment technologies. Although this revolution has been gradual, changes in information management practices have occurred rapidly.
According to Agha (2014), information management technologies such as Electronic Medical/Medical Records (EHRs/EMRs) have taken the healthcare industry by storm because of their potential to improve healthcare delivery. health, quality of care, production and overall reliability of healthcare services. health care. fields. 6053Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues
Others, such as communication, have led to the emergence of telehealth/telehealth that allows clinicians to remotely assess, diagnose, prescribe, and monitor their patients. While technology has created many opportunities in the healthcare industry, it also poses many problems that need to be addressed in order for patients and hospitals to achieve peak efficiency. 6053Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues
The opportunities that arise from technology include quality improvement, cost reduction, increased productivity, and enhanced workflow, and improved patient safety. Technology not only allows clinicians to serve multiple patients simultaneously, but it also lowers the costs that patients incur as they visit hospitals, and the time that is wasted before service delivery (Agha, 2014; Mitchell & Kan, 2019). Healthcare services have thus become more efficient and reliable.
Unfortunately, technology threatens to worsen the existing healthcare disparities since new technologies and the necessary infrastructure are only available to the already privileged communities (Lee, 2015). For instance, patients with no access to computers, smartphones, and internet connectivity cannot access telemedicine. Further, the high implementation costs have limited the adoption of technology by hospitals by inadequately funded hospitals. 6053Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues
However, the most significant concern is the effect of technology on the quality of care and patient safety. As cyber threats continue to threaten the safety of patient records and the integrity of healthcare services, some experts are concerned that ill-trained clinicians, faulty equipment, inaccurate data, and obsolete technologies, among others, could affect the quality of care (Gutiérrez-Ibarluzea, Chiumente & Dauben, 2017).
The threat is worsened by the fast pace in which technologies become obsolete and the sharing of data across an entire healthcare facility or system. At the same time, a minor glitch could disrupt all essential healthcare services. 6053Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues
A lot needs to be done to address the issues above. First, the government and other stakeholders should invest heavily in providing basic services such as internet connectivity to the people and reducing the gap that already exists in this area. Additionally, the government, hospitals, learning institutions, and other stakeholders should invest heavily in research and development to raise the reliability of healthcare technologies and their relevance to the needs of the patients.
This commitment should also focus on identifying and developing solutions to threats. Hospitals should be prepared to incur considerable costs in implementing healthcare technologies. While it is costly to invest in healthcare technologies, the long-term operating costs, increased productivity, and other saved costs raise the sustainability of technologies and their return on investment (Mitchell & Kan, 2019).
Finally, healthcare professionals should be trained before they are introduced to new technologies, while they should also be required to update their knowledge and skills on a frequent basis. 6053Organizational Policies and Practices to Support Healthcare Issues