Challenges in Nursing
Nurses have faced different ethical, political, legal and economic challenges in their quest to offer better services to their clients. Most of the clients who in this case are the patients and have different health complications at times have put the nurses and the healthcare community into a dilemma. The manner of offering medication depends on the willingness of the patient and the family of the patient and the political and the legal issues behind the form of medication.
Central Venous Line is a type of medication that can be used in balancing the fluid within a patient. Most patients have accused this method of medication to be the cause of some health complications. Lack of belief from the patients leaves most of the nurses stranded on whether to listen to the patient or adopt that kind of medication. According to Badzek et al. (2013), poor agreement, lack of trust from the patient and the bullying of the nurses by other working partners is the biggest ethical challenge affecting most of the nurses.
The economic standards of the patients have led to poor services offered in healthcare. Inserting Central Venous Line within a patient requires much money. Apart from the money that is required in its insertion, the maintenance charges are usually higher. This means that if a patient is not in a position to pay for the services, then the patient might not receive the required services. In such cases, a patient might lose life not because there was no solution to the problem but because he or she could not pay for the services.
According to AAACN (2001) telemedicine is a method of using the telecommunication systems to offer medical assistance to people who are far away from where the service providers are. This use of technology is yet to be employed in most of the American states thanks to the unappealing legal issues. The American health laws do not allow a professional from one state to get licensed in another state. What this means is that it will be illegal when a healthcare service provider from one state provides the relevant health information to a patient in another state. Healthcare providers could, therefore, not attend to their patients whom, unfortunately, come from another state through the telemedicine.
The mandatory nurse to patient ratio is one of the most discussed political issues that affect the nurses and the health service providers. According to the laws that govern the country, the nurse to the patient ratio has been very high meaning that the nurses will not attend to the patients effectively. The low number of nurses as compared to the ever rising number of patients has made it difficult to offer the services. Patients who need to be fitted with Central Venous Line will not receive better services if the government does not employ more nurses.
Healthcare service providers have been affected by the poor pay and the harsh working conditions. Changing the work hour from eight to twelve have changed the performance of the nurses. Long working hours make the nurses strain at get exhausted leading to inadequate services. It is very difficult to offer better services when one is poorly paid.
The ethical challenges that the nurses and other health service providers face in the country is in contrary with most of the professions. Lecturers and teachers have the freedom to offer their services in any part of the country irrespective of the state they come from. Even without working license from one state, a lecturer could still offer his or her service in that country. The nurses, on the other hand, have no such freedom.
The working hours of lecturers and teachers as compared to the nurses is low. This means that lecturers can get into the college at eight in the morning and leave at five in the evening. Unlike nurses, the lecturers will have time for social life and take some part time studies.
References
American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing (AAACN). (2001). Telehealth nursing practice and administration standards. Pitman, NJ: Author. Retrieved August 1, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <<www.aaacn.org/resource/telephon.htm>>
American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nursing(AAACN). (2001). Telehealth nursing practice core course manual. Pitman, NJ: Author. Retrieved August 1, 2001 from the World Wide Web: <<www.aaacn.org/resource/default.htm>>
Badzek, L., Henaghan, M., Turner, M., & Monsen, R. (2013). Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues in the Translation of Genomics Into Health Care. Journal Of Nursing Scholarship, 45(1), 15-24. doi:10.1111/jnu.12000
