Role of Nursing in Health Care Reform

With the consistent changes being observed in the healthcare industry, we can easily witness a reform taking place in this sector due to the upgraded transformation taking place in nursing today. With this sort of change taking place, it has become all the more significant for nurses to learn and develop core competencies that lead to highest quality patient care, which is the ultimate goal of any healthcare organization.

Many innovative models have been created recently with the aim of delivering superior care to patients, especially the older adults and aging population who suffer from the most critical conditions to address their complex needs and fulfill the demand shortage for these demographics. And it is extremely important to make nurses an important part of design and development of such innovations as they are responsible for delivering such quality care.

There is a strong need for such innovation to be coupled with research in nursing. A very recent and commendable example of such initiative is the one taken by Lifespan to provide $1 million funding for evolution and progress of nurses. Such research will enhance the competencies of nurses to execute as part of patient care. Such innovation and research need to be combined with making the use of available technologies to the best possible advantage. Amongst these helpful nursing technologies are portable monitors to keep check on patients on the move, smart beds to track patients' vitals, wearable devices to track patient’s overall health condition, to name a few.

Along with such requirements, it is also of great importance to involve a greater number of Advanced Practice Nurses (APNs) to provide primary care to patients as they also contribute in reduction of medication errors.

Thus, the growing need of developing nurses as leaders needs to be addressed for bright future of healthcare industry as a whole.