Improving access to care is one of the primary tasks faced by healthcare practitioners all over the world (Currie, Chiarella, & Buckley, 2015). Unfortunately, because of the specifics of certain communities, such as low family income, poor infrastructure, lack of highly qualified healthcare experts, etc., accessing care is fraught with numerous challenges.
The identified issue conflicts with Provision 8 of the New Code of Ethics for Nurses, which states that “The nurse collaborates with other health professionals and the public to protect human rights, promote health diplomacy, and reduce health disparities” (Lachman, Swanson, & Winland-Brown, 2015). Therefore, it is crucial that the current nursing programs should be geared toward improving the communication process between a nurse and the community so that a rapid increase in the accessibility and, therefore, quality of care could be possible.
The focus on providing every patient with equal access to care is a crucial step in improving healthcare outcomes among the members of the target community. Therefore, the relevant programs involving the use of the existing IT tools, the improvement of the infrastructure, etc., should be encouraged actively. As a result, a drop in negative patient outcomes triggered by the inability to access healthcare services can be expected (Grajales, Sheps, Ho, Novak-Lauscher, & Eysenbach, 2014).
The promotion of the essential healthcare-related knowledge and skills among the community should be recognized as crucial support of the professional status of a nurse. Indeed, by encouraging patient education and promoting the development of independence among the community members, a nurse is likely to teach the patients successfully about the current health concerns and the means of managing them, as well as options for receiving the help and support of healthcare experts. Therefore, using IT tools such as social media must be considered an essential tool for promoting awareness among the target communities and improving access to care successfully (Attai et al., 2017).
References
Attai, D. J., Cowher, M. S., Al-Hamadani, M., Schoger, J. M., Staley, A. C., & Landercasper, J. (2017). Twitter social media is an effective tool for breast cancer patient education and support: Patient-reported outcomes by the survey. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 17(7), e188. Web.
Currie, J., Chiarella, M., & Buckley, T. (2015). Preparing a realist evaluation to investigate the impact of privately practicing nurse practitioners on patient access to care in Australia. International Journal of Nursing, 2(2), 1-10. Web.
Grajales, F. J., Sheps, S., Ho, K., Novak-Lauscher, H., & Eysenbach, G. (2014). Social media: A review and tutorial of applications in medicine and health care. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 16(2), e13. Web.
Lachman, V. D., Swanson, E. O., & Winland-Brown, J. (2015). The new ‘Code of ethics for nurses with interpretive statements’ (2015): Practical clinical application, part II. MEDSURG Nursing, 24(5), 363-368.