Evolving Practice of Nursing and Patient Care Delivery Models

Evolving Practice of Nursing and Patient Care Delivery Models
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Evolving Practice of Nursing and Patient Care Delivery Models
An overview of current practices in nursing reveals that, the nursing profession has evolved significantly. There are numerous changes in the nursing profession, which also show that, there has been a paradigm shift in the nursing concept. Initially, healthcare organizations used registered nurses, but of late, healthcare organizations have preferred services from highly skilled nurses. Apart from this, healthcare organizations are adopting strategic practices, such as restructuring their staffs to cut costs, reducing registered nurses, increasing unlicensed assistive personnel and many other strategic practices. On the other hand, there is increased utilization of nursing care delivery frameworks, or models, which comprise of nursing teams. Presently, there is a focus on the nurse playing a supervisory role to the nursing team in an aim to ensure that, the team acquires cognitive and knowledge skills (Porter-O'Grady, 2014).
The medical home is the most popular model in nursing profession, which aims at the delivery of enhanced nursing services, mainly in terms of primary care. This model has gained worldwide recognition, and many countries across the world, are testing the efficacy of the model. In this regard, it is important to note that, in the future, medical homes are likely to dominate when accountable-care organizations (ACO) gain momentum. This is so because there is a possibility of ACOs adopting some of the elements in medical homes to manage care in the ACO context (Barnes et al., 2014). On the other hand, the nursing profession is evolving rapidly. Therefore, future nurses will require a variety of skills, for example, delegation and critical thinking skills.
This is necessary, mainly when considering the provision of services in a nurse-managed healthcare clinic. Apart from this, the nurses will require adequate leadership skills. This is because they are playing a managerial role. Critical thinking skills will help them make decisions centered or aimed at the improvement of patient care, including the maintenance of the quality of the healthcare service...