In the modern world of nursing, it is not enough to be a nurse and complete several duties and tasks prescribed in special acts, regulations, and standards. Nurses must be passionate about their intentions to promote positive change and improve health care delivery (Milstead, 2016). Nursing roles have been already increased and developed considerably, and each new function is the possibility to improve health care for patients, speed up care delivery, and support patient-nurse communication (Bauer & Bodenheimer, 2017; Luck, Chok, Scott, & Wilkes, 2016; Torke et al., 2016). New ideas and improvements help to avoid professional complications and challenges, including shortage, financial concerns, poor motivation, and a lack of knowledge (Auerbach et al., 2013).
Nursing practice is the field specialized knowledge is used, appropriate skills are developed, and independent decisions are made by patients or their families, as well as nurses or other medical workers. Each state of American has its NPA (nurse practice act) under which nurses cooperate with patients. In this act, such points as education programs, training, authority, licenses, and discipline have been already included.
As a nurse leader, I can see that nursing practice requires many tasks to be completed in a short period. For example, when a patient arrives at a hospital, it is necessary to gather some personal information, organize physical examination, take some lab tests, and stay focused on a patient all the time. One nurse can hardly cope with such amount of work. Therefore, it is important to develop a policy under which several nurses have to work with one patient. A small full-time nurse duet or trio is the key to success in health care delivery.
Such an idea may gain some supporters and opponents at the same time. On the one hand, nurses can be studied on how to work in a team, develop duties, and pay much attention to the problems of a patient. Three nurses in a team can take three different responsibilities: care for a patient, communication with a family, and laboratories. As a rule, it is possible to follow several patients and not to be confused with the names, health problems, and other important data. Such stakeholders as educators, trainers, patients, and nurses may help to implement the idea by sharing their knowledge and opinions.
However, such stakeholders as chiefs, HR managers, and investors may block the idea due to the necessity to hire more nurses and be under a threat of nurse shortage due to the inability to increase salaries to all employees. Still, the benefits of such a policy include increased motivation, teamwork, and some kind of competition that helps to discover nurses’ skills and abilities, and job satisfaction because nurses should not be challenged by the necessity to complete several tasks simultaneously.
The procedure of accepting a patient and delivering the required health care can be fastened. Nurses can cooperate and discuss their interests and abilities in a team to complete the necessary work at a high level. The Affordable Care Act increased the demands and experiences of patients, and a small group of nurses aims at addressing all those requests and providing space for primary care providers (Auerbach et al., 2013).
The idea of a small nurse team in hospitals should be implemented to check if it improves health care delivery, facilitates the work of primary care workers, and increases nurses’ job satisfaction. These three dependent variables should prove or disprove the importance of such a change in the chosen facilities.
References
Auerbach, D.I., Chen P.G., Friedberg, M.W., Reid, R., Lau, C., Buerhaus, P.I., & Mehrotra, A. (2013). Nurse-managed health centers and patient-centered medical homes could mitigate expected primary care physician shortage. Health Affairs, 32(11), 1933-1941. Web.
Bauer, L., & Bodenheimer, T. (2017). Expanded roles of registered nurses in primary care delivery of the future. Nursing Outlook. Web.
Luck, L., Chok, H.N., Scott, N., & Wilkes, L. (2016). The role of the breast care nurse in patient and family care. Journal of Clinical Nursing.Web.
Milstead, J.A. (2016). Health policy and politics: A nurse guide (5th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Web.
Torke, A.M., Wocial, L.D., Johns, S.A., Sachs, G.A., Callahan, C.M., Bosslet, G.T., … Burke, E.S. (2016). The family navigator: A pilot intervention to support intensive care unit family surrogates. American Journal of Critical Care, 25(6), 498-507. Web.