Significance of Professional Development, Lifelong Learning, in Relation to Diverse Populations Across the Life Span and Health-Illness Continuum

            The nursing profession is very challenging due to the continuous changes in information and ways of providing care. To keep up with the changes, there is a need to adopt a lifelong learning attitude for better professional development and improve the quality of care provided. Consequently, nurses encounter patients from different cultural backgrounds, different age groups, and diverse illnesses (Whitehead, Dittman, & McNulty, 2017). As such it becomes very hard to take care of such patients while relying primarily on the education that was gained before in graduate school. However, lifelong learning will help in keeping up with the3 current information and technology required in taking care of this diverse population.

Effectiveness of Nurses Managing Patient Care Within an Evolving Health Care System

            In the current healthcare system, nurses play a new role in care coordination from numerous providers, managing caseloads of individuals with intense healthcare needs, and helping patients transition to other healthcare settings or into their homes. Additionally, the evolving healthcare system has allowed nurses to work as “health coaches” with effective results both in illness prevention and health promotion (Famure et al., 2020). Lastly, new paths have been established for nurses in emerging fields such as informatics, telehealth, scientists, leaders, and genetics and genomics, which have improved the quality and efficiency of healthcare provision.