Students are required to maintain weekly reflective narratives throughout the course to combine into one course-long reflective journal that integrates leadership
Expert Answer and Explanation
New Practice Approaches
Nursing is a disciple that heavily relies on new practice approaches. Through these approaches,’ nurses can identify the best way to deal with emerging healthcare problems, such as Covid-19. Carlson, Berg, and Nolbris (2020) note that research and quality improvement projects are among the activities that allow nurses to develop new practices approaches they can apply to improve their patients’ health. Through quality improvement projects and studies, nurses can develop treatment protocols and clinical procedures.
This course has provided me with the best skills I can apply when developing new practice approaches. The skills include proper decision-making, critical thinking, data collection skills, and communication abilities. Through the project, I have also learned some project management skills that can help me when I am overseeing a quality improvement project (Toruner & Altay, 2018).
I have also acquired research skills to conduct studies in future and develop new interventions to treat emerging healthcare problems.
Interprofessional Collaboration
According to Reeves, Pelone, Harrison, Goldman, and Zwarenstein (2017), interprofessional collaboration is where healthcare professionals, including nurses, doctors, specialists, social workers, and nurse informatics professionals, work together to provide care and improve patient outcome. Interprofessional collaboration is one of the significant practices in the healthcare sector.
One of the importance of practice is reducing medical errors. When healthcare professionals work together, the chances of making errors will be minimal because they will be more accurate.
The second benefit of inter-professional collaboration is improving patient outcomes and care. A patient walking into an emergency department complaining a nurse check pain in the chest at the triage then referred to a cardiologist, who will refer the patient to a lab technician (Tang, Zhou, Chan, & Liaw, 2018).
For the patient to improve, more than three different healthcare professionals have worked on him. Lastly, interprofessional collaboration can make patients receive faster treatment, hence reduce healthcare costs and inefficiencies.
Health Care Delivery and Clinical Systems
I have learned about various healthcare delivery models and clinical systems during this course. The first model I have encountered is the out-of-pocket model. This model is used by individuals who are not insured and the ones who are underinsured to pay for their medical bills. Another model is the Beveridge model.
In this kind of delivery model, the state or government eliminates competition by preventing the private sector from investing in the healthcare center to make a health single-payer system (Aviki, Schleicher, Mullangi, Matsoukas & Korenstein, 2018).
I also learned that these delivery models have been operational due to the help of available clinical systems. An example of such a system is radiology and pathology systems. These technologies can be used for pathology and radiology services. Electronic health records have also improved healthcare delivery.
They have played a huge part in the management of patient data (American Nurses Association, 2015). Remote patient monitoring systems have also improved healthcare delivery by reducing care costs and making care accessible.
Ethical Consideration in Healthcare
Healthcare professionals are guided by specific ethical principles when conducting their care activities. The first ethical consideration is autonomy. According to this principle, healthcare professionals should exclusively follow the decisions of patients when giving care. For instance, when patients do not want to be treated, they should respect it.
Another consideration is justice and fairness. Caregivers should be just and fair when providing care to patients. They should not prejudice against patients.
Salminen et al. (2016) note that many patients, especially the African American population, experience discrimination when seeking pain medications. When these patients come for pain medications, caregivers often view them as substance abusers. Healthcare professionals should be fair. Non-maleficence is also another ethical consideration.
Here, healthcare providers are advised to prescribe treatment plans and medications that are less harmful and beneficial (Wang et al., 2016). The last consideration requires healthcare workers to conduct their activities at the right time and place.
Population health concerns
Population health concerns are healthcare problem that threaten the health of people of a specifi