Ethics is one of the key concerns in nursing care since it defines rules of conduct and nursing values. The ANA Code of Ethics is a critical document that sets forward the standards of ethical nursing practice (Quinnipiac University Online, 2017). These standards can be applied to all activities involved in nursing care, including care management and coordination. The present paper will consider the relationship between the ANA Code of Ethics and care management and coordination in nursing.
According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ, 2018), care coordination is a process of organizing patient care and sharing information with involved parties to achieve a higher quality of care and better patient outcomes. Effective care coordination can thus decrease healthcare costs and prevent hospital readmissions (Hollingsworth Forbes, 2014). It also helps to improve the continuity of care, which is essential to ensuring positive outcomes in the long term (Yoder, 2017).
The revised Code of Ethics for Nurses supports the need for adequate care coordination through provisions 2, 4, and 8, which emphasize the nurses’ commitment to patients, obligation to promote health, and collaboration with other providers (Lachman, Swanson, & Winland-Brown, 2015; Winland-Brown, Swanson, & Lanchman, 2015). Thus, the Code shows that improving care coordination is a necessary part of ethical nursing practice.
Care management is a concept related to care coordination, although it also includes other areas of nursing practice. The primary goal of care management is to improve the quality of care provided, thus reducing the population health burden and helping patients to manage their illness. The ANA Code of Ethics applies to all aspects of care management since the document is also focused on care quality improvement. One particular provision of the Code that has the greatest potential to achieve lasting change in care management is patient advocacy, which involves supporting the patients’ interests both by providing high-quality care and by advocating for essential healthcare issues (Lachman et al., 2015; Winland-Brown et al., 2015).
Patient advocacy can assist nurses in care management by increasing access to care, enhancing care quality on a national level, and improving population health through political initiatives (Warner, 2017). As a result, the ANA Code of Ethics can assist in care management both on the practice level and on the policy level.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). (2018). Care coordination. Web.
Hollingsworth Forbes, T. H. III. (2014). Making the case for the nurse as the leader of care coordination. Nursing Forum, 49(3), 167-170.
Lachman, V. D., Swanson, E. O. C., & Winland-Brown, J. (2015). The new ‘Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretative Statements’: Practical clinical application, Part II. MedSurg Nursing, 24(5), 363-368.
Quinnipiac University Online. (2017). NUR486 module 5 [Video file]. Web.
Warner, S. L. (2017). Getting political about patient advocacy. Nursing 2017, 47(11), 47-49.
Winland-Brown, J., Lachman, V. D., & Swanson, E. O. C. (2015). The new ‘Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretative Statements’: Practical clinical application, Part I. MedSurg Nursing, 24(4), 268-272.
Yoder, L. (2017). Care coordination and transition management: Critical roles for medical-surgical nurses. MedSurg Nursing, 26(4), 225-227.