The Institute of Medicine’s 2010 report “The future of nursing: Leading change, advancing health” is notable guidelines for healthcare professionals to realize the significance and role of nurses. It contains several vital points for nurses, the realization of which leads to their exceptional performance. Below, the discussion on the crucial elements, messages, and ideas of the report will be provided.
Four Messages
The first message is that nurses should use their knowledge and skills to the fullest degree possible. While the majority of RNs and APRNs hold master’s or doctorate credentials and have passed national certification tests. APRNs include NPs, clinical nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists, as well as nurse-midwives (The Institute of Medicine, 2010). Given that state licensure and practices laws fluctuate, the related regulations – which specify the actions that a certified nurse can undertake – are distinct in various categories of nurses in diverse areas of the US.
The second message is that nurses are to be able to get greater standards of education as a result of a better education structure that encourages continuous academic advancement. The nursing educational framework must be enhanced in order to assure the provision of secure, patient-centered treatment in all settings (The Institute of Medicine, 2010). Patients’ requirements have gotten more complex, and nurses must have the necessary skills to provide significant care.
The third message is that nurses, along with doctors, ought to be equal participants in the reform of healthcare in the US. Nurses will be more prepared to enhance healthcare and progress in their careers if efforts to create and develop leaders inside the nursing sector are made (The Institute of Medicine, 2010). Nurse managers must participate fully in redesign initiatives, take responsibility for their own commitments to providing high-quality care, and collaborate with leadership from other medical fields. As a full participant, a nurse will be responsible for detecting problems and concerns of systemic waste, developing and executing improvement strategies, assessing progress over the years, and making required modifications to meet objectives.
The fourth message is that better data gathering and upgraded communication infrastructure are required for efficient personnel planning and governance. Extensive information on the type and quantity of healthcare practitioners is currently accessible. It is required to fulfill necessities to plan for substantial, broad reforms in the training and placement of the nursing field (The Institute of Medicine, 2010). Systematic evaluation and prediction of staffing by job, skill mix, location, and demography will be essential to influence shifts in nursing practices and to learn once an enhanced framework for receiving and evaluating workforce statistics is available.
Report’s Influence
The report provides a number of essential insights within the scope of significant nursing practice. Particularly, it clearly states the directions in which nurses should advance their activities in healthcare. These directions are related to the dimensions of continuous learning, cooperation with other medical professionals, and diversity and inclusiveness in terms of staffing. By appealing to and recognizing the report’s provisions, nurses are able to realize their roles and significance. This, in turn, results in confidence in what they are doing, mental resistance, and improved patient outcomes resulting from the mentioned factors.
Education
The contemporary world imposes a great number of challenges on the healthcare system. Management, public health, system reform, teamworking, and expertise in specialized content fields such as communities and general health are among fields under considerable pressure in this vein. Nurses are being asked to take on new responsibilities and grasp new technical instruments and data systems while cooperating and coordinating treatment across multidisciplinary teams, which is determined by the needs of diverse populations. A crucial point here is that modern trends of constant cultural diversification imply considerable changes in healthcare policies. The capability to adapt to such conditions is defined not only by educational background but also by efficient obtaining of skills and experience. Education is a crucial background on which a nurse is able to found relationships with patients.
Continuous Learning
For a long time, there was no understanding of the role of the nurse in both clinical work – in what is called independent nursing practice – and in the clinic management system. Because of this, many nurses, even those with higher education, remained in the same positions – procedural, ward, and others (Yip, 2021). Indeed, not every nurse is destined to become a leader because not every doctor becomes the head of the department or the head physician. The presence of higher education is a necessary but clearly not sufficient condition for obtaining a high position or ensuring significant patient outcomes (Frisch & Rabinowitsch, 2019). Nurses are to adapt to the current features of the most demanding part of the population in the framework of healthcare – aging people. Integration of theory and practice in this vein is possible only through constant development and experience enrichment.
Nurses’ Role in Healthcare
In a number of cases, the qualifications of a nurse are enough to help a patient – to explain the features of the regimen, nutrition, and rules for taking medications, to teach the necessary manipulations and self-help techniques, to teach how to use medical devices correctly. The doctor deals only with the patient and prescribes treatment. Often long queues of patients line up at the doctor, who only needs to write a prescription or referral (Frisch & Rabinowitsch, 2019). This can be done by a nurse – they do not prescribe the drug but supervises intakes, focusing on the doctor’s records in the outpatient card. The patient does not sit in a queue, and the doctor does not waste precious time. Through the provided examples, it is visible that nurses are able to meet various challenges and are an integrated element of healthcare.
References
Frisch, N. C., & Rabinowitsch, D. (2019). What’s in a definition? Holistic nursing, integrative health care, and integrative nursing: Report of an integrated literature review. Journal of Holistic Nursing, 37(3), 260–272.
The Institute of Medicine. (2010). The future of nursing: Leading change, advancing health. Web.
Yip, J. Y. (2021). Theory-based advanced nursing practice: A practice update on the application of Orem’s self-care deficit nursing theory.SAGE Open Nursing. Web.