The continually growing shortage of nurses especially in terms of future projections in comparison to current trends is indeed a growing challenge in healthcare sector. Since the second half of 1990s, significant drops were observed in admission of nursing students to nursing colleges (Benner et al., 2009). As long as the current workforce is aging, severe shortage of nurses is expected to reign given the previous trend.
Therefore, there is dire need to address this issue with immediate concern by admitting bigger numbers. Besides, nurses undergo normal-setting preparations in their course of study.
Care deliveries within varied settings like homes, communities and ambulatory settings are not taken into consideration. A call is therefore made to address this issue by redesigning nursing education in preparing nurses to deliver healthcare services within these challenging settings (Benner et al., 2009).
Federal funding for nursing schools is unpredictable at its best, thereby implying that there is reduced room for resource expansion. Owing to changing times and ideologies, new resources are imperative in influencing knowledge-acceptance. Consequently, public and patient trust on new nurses dwindles greatly when nursing education is considered outdated.
This, coupled with usual notions arising from the presence of majority female nurses, contribute to another impression that nursing is basically a female and semiskilled profession; affecting nursing negatively. There is need to increase funding for updating nursing education and resources and thus gain new skills and good public perception (Jenkins & Lea, 2005).
This report greatly impacts contents of incorporation into nursing schemes. To begin with, there is acknowledgement of outdated practices in nursing profession due to scarce funding.
This report, therefore, highlights the significance of updating resources and expanding room for extra funding for these new resources and thus bringing nursing skills up-to-date. Secondly, facing the drops in numbers, redesigning of curricula should consider strategic increment in numbers through scholarships and other offers.
IOM Teaching IOM: Implications of the IOM reports for nursing education
There is recommendation for improvement of nursing education through delivered reports made by IOM. These reports are prepared after thorough researches in the nursing profession, schools and centers.
To begin with, there is importance in placing foundational proficiency in the forefront due to ongoing anxieties for patient safety (Finkelman, Kenner & ANA, 2009). The reports produced recognize errors and risky practices in healthcare industry and thus give recommendations for improvement practices.
Continuous quality improvement can be integrated into teaching practices through devising new teaching policies and course material for our nursing courses and institutions.
Evidence-based performances can be realized by integrating research with patient values and expertise in order to increase care to optimum levels. Patient-centered care can be incorporated through incorporating patients into care delivery and programs, such that creation of content suitable for curricula and individual courses becomes easy (Lundy & Janes, 2009).
Integration of basic IT skills into nursing curriculum education will integrate use of informatics as a core competency in nursing. Encouraging teamwork and team-leaderships in nursing can contribute to integration of work on interdisciplinary teams and thus integration of this core competency (Feldman, & Greenberg, 2005).
Although core competencies have been identified in nursing sector, implementation challenges are inevitable. Following the downward trend of resource funding in nursing, integration of informatics into nursing will prove to be cumbersome.
Due to existence of old standards of nursing practice, devising new curricula may need more time than actually anticipated leading to delays in implementation of core competencies.
Involving patient-care centers into nursing curricula can prove to be too difficult given the conspicuous differences since they run at different times. Hence, integrating such programs may be quite cumbersome.
References
Benner, P. et al. (2009).Educating Nurses: A call for radical transformation. New York: Wiley & Sons.
Feldman, H. R. & Greenberg, M.J. (2005). Educating nurses for leadership. New York: Springer Ltd.
Finkelman, A.W., Kenner, C. & ANA (2009). Teaching IOM: implications of the Institute of Medicine reports for nursing education. Silver Spring: American Nurses Association.
Jenkins, J. F. & Lea, D.H. (2005). Nursing care in the genomic era: A case-based approach. Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.
Lundy, K. S. & Janes, S. (2009). Community health nursing: caring for the public’s health. Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.