Glimpse Into the Different Areas of Education, Essay Example

Introduction

The Master’s degree in nursing offers students significant opportunities for professional growth and development within the context of nursing practice. The document entitled “The Essentials of Master’s Education in Nursing” by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing offers a glimpse into the different areas of education where there are significant opportunities for nurses to improve their knowledge base and visibility to solve complex problems and to develop feasible solutions throughout the nursing profession. It is important to identify specific criteria related to these objectives that are likely to have a positive and lasting impact on nursing practice and on the quality of patient care that is administered throughout the healthcare system. There must be a greater emphasis on patient care needs and quality-based objectives that will have a positive and lasting impact on healthcare outcomes throughout all areas of the practice environment. Two key principles, “Quality Improvement and Safety” and “Health Policy and Advocacy” provide alternatives for nursing students to advance specific education-based agendas to support the nursing profession and to have a lasting impact on achieving excellence within the nursing profession. It is expected that these and other guiding principles that govern advanced nursing educational curricula and clinical experiences will play a critical role in shaping how nurses respond to emerging issues within the profession and how to overcome challenges that may impact decision-making and quality of care throughout the practice setting.

Quality Improvement and Safety

Direct patient care within the nursing profession must embody the key principles of excellence in quality and in supporting the objectives of nurses at all levels of the profession in different ways. Nurses must be properly trained and have the knowledge that is required to meet the expectations of patient care, including an understanding of the elements that impact care and treatment at the bedside. Patients may experience difficult challenges for which nurses must administer care and treatment that is of the utmost quality and decency to ensure that their health is not compromised. This requires an understanding of the larger picture of nursing practice that includes adequate staffing across nursing units, sufficient time to perform all required procedures, mastering techniques that will meet all required objectives, and having the resources in place that will be effective in meeting patient care needs at all times. It is expected that nurses will likely perform to the best of their ability when the nursing unit is able to meet these requirements, along with an understanding of how to protect patients from a variety of risks, such as medication errors and unnecessary falls that may cause injury. When nursing units and healthcare organizations are able to fully accommodate nurses with respect to staffing, education, training, and resources, there are likely to be numerous benefits in the form of improved quality of care at the bedside, fewer errors regarding medication administration, lower numbers of patient falls, and greater satisfaction among nurses, which will translate into greater productivity and unity among nursing professionals.

Health Policy and Advocacy

From a nursing education perspective, advanced education offers an examination of key issues that are critical to the nursing profession and which provide nurses with opportunities to address timely issues that involve health policy. Current policies and future directions in healthcare policy must include the perspectives of nurses, as they possess essential knowledge and expertise that supports the demands of the profession and of the healthcare system as a whole. It is the responsibility of nurses to work cooperatively and collaboratively to ensure that healthcare policies are realistic and meet the demands of modern healthcare systems, including the need for improvements in patient care quality and safety. There must also be a greater emphasis on nurses as advocates for their patients and for improving policy-based decision-making throughout the healthcare system, as this supports the inclusion of nurses in larger decision-making processes that directly involve meeting patient needs at all levels. Nurses must advocate on behalf of patients, many of whom do not have a voice of their own, and in areas such as mental health, this is a critical factor that must be addressed in order to protect patients from further risk or harm. There must be a greater emphasis on the development of nursing-based objectives that will support improvements and changes to health policies as warranted and the development of advocacy-based measures that will ultimately improve quality of life for patients who may not be able to speak for themselves, such as those in vulnerable populations.

Conclusion

Advanced nursing education offers a number of benefits to students, including but not limited to the ability of nurses to support wide-ranging measures that impact a number of critical areas such as patient care quality, patient safety, health policy, and patient advocacy. There must be a continued emphasis on the ability of nurses to support favorable health-related outcomes for their patients and to recognize the value of patient-based advocacy efforts that may pose a shift in policy and in supporting new objectives for patients to achieve higher quality care and treatment on a continuous basis. It is important for nurses to have a voice and to speak for others in support of improvements to the healthcare system that will positively impact patients and provide them with high quality care and treatment under the safest possible conditions, while also advocating for change and progress in many other areas to improve health and wellbeing.

Works Cited

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. “The essentials of Master’s education in nursing. 9 October 2015: http://www.aacn.nche.edu/education-resources/MastersEssentials11.pdf

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