Personalization of Care
One of the most significant changes is the personalization of healthcare delivery. Although modern patients want the ease and convenience of digital interactions, personalized care is their key to loyalty. According to Shi and Singh (2022), the ideal care experience requires a personal touch, whether in-person or virtual. Patients want caregivers to set time to listen, communicate clearly, and show care.
Personalized care combines predictive technologies with an engaged patient to coordinate care, promoting health and preventing diseases (Shi & Singh, 2022). Today, nurses can offer holistic care that puts patients’ needs at the forefront and meets them. This change influences nursing research by developing research studies to find ways in which nurses can personalize care. Researchers strive to develop evidence-based practices that ensure the most personalized care to meet patients’ needs (Shi & Singh, 2022). Introducing new research studies means that nursing research funding will require an increase in cases where the health department cannot fund such studies; such a change cannot be researched or implemented.
Patient Consumerization
Another change is patient consumerization, which involves redesigning services to focus on end-users as consumers. Today, people can order goods and services and receive them on the same day. The patient expects the same level of transparency and efficiency from healthcare services.
Sadly, patients still experience uncertain and delayed services, such as waiting for examination results for an unspecified period. Patient consumerization necessitates that healthcare institutions assess current barriers to consumer satisfaction and deploy patient-centric and analytics technologies to promote convenience, transparency, and the speed of care (Shi & Singh, 2022). For example, suppose an institution’s healthcare system adopted precision scheduling practices to reduce wasted time between imaging exams. In that case, an institution can almost double the number of slots annually, allowing patients to be scheduled sooner (Shi & Singh, 2022).
Patient consumerization changes impact nursing research by highlighting the need to investigate best practices and technologies that can improve consumer satisfaction (Shi & Singh, 2022). This means that nursing researchers will need to expand their research funding.
Workforce Diversity and Safety
Workforce diversity and safety are other trending changes in the healthcare system. Healthcare institutions must practice inclusion and diversity to ensure equal employment opportunities (Shi & Singh, 2022). Following the needs of a diverse patient population, caregivers must be culturally competent to accommodate the cultural needs of all patients. Institutions should also invest in programs and tools that offer greater flexibility to employees, allowing them to work remotely (Shi & Singh, 2022).
Ensuring workforce safety entails ensuring that caregivers’ mental health is intact. These include developing effective workplace safety measures, fostering a protective culture, and stabilizing employees’ mental health status. The COVID-19 epidemic highlighted massive neglect of frontline caregivers’ safety, leading to hundreds of deaths. Emerging needs indicate that healthcare systems should equip employees with adequate safety tools to ensure effective care delivery in times of emergency (World Health Organization [WHO], 2018). Institutions must allocate more emergency funds to ensure the purchase of employee safety equipment, especially those in emergency rooms.
The change influences nursing research by necessitating new studies to bridge the knowledge gap regarding the required workforce diversity and safety (WHO, 2018). Healthcare researchers must conduct evidence-based studies to offer best practices for these changes. Finally, nursing research funding will need to accommodate the new research development. The changes could influence the development of new policies and procedures for research funding, ensuring that funds are distributed evenly to support necessary studies (WHO, 2018). Without expanding the budget, adding new research to the existing funding could compromise study coverage, thus failing to achieve the desired outcomes.
References
Shi, L., & Singh, D. A. (2022). Essentials of the US health care system. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
World Health Organization. (2018). Public spending on health: A closer look at global trends 18(3), 1-56.