Noemi Mendez Hernandez
– Friday, January 27, 2023, 6:24 AM
Number of replies: 3
Week 5 Health Care Policy
In the ever-changing healthcare surroundings, life continuous learning is a must for healthcare professionals. Nursing staff is encouraged to update and improve their skills and broaden their knowledge throughout the whole employment period. In most healthcare institutions, favorable conditions for continuous learning have been created. Their administrations promote nurses to participate in advanced training, workshops, leadership and nursing educational programs. Continuing professional development (CPD) programs are an efficient option for proactive planning of nurses’ knowledge and skills updating.
In the CPD program, both individual and generalized educational strategies are efficiently combined. On the one hand, with the advent of new medical equipment and software, all nurses have to improve some skills from time to time. For example, these are nursing informatics or technical skills for correct using medical wearables or monitoring patients’ vitals using the new telemetrical equipment. On the other hand, nurses are encouraged to acquire new skills proceeding from their individual needs. According to Ramani et al (2019), they may develop complex skills such as “communication, interprofessional collaboration, teamwork, leadership and reflective practice” (p.1047). These general skills are useful for working in interdisciplinary teams, new healthcare settings, in terms of emergency preparedness, high stress. At the same time, under coordination of CPD leaders the nurses can develop some narrow-focused programs, if they are going to move to another department or healthcare institution or even change specialization. Within the framework of the CPD program, the role of CPD leaders cannot be underestimated. They collect information and statistics about basic skills and shortage of knowledge, the latest trends for training.
In most countries, participation in CPD programs means an automatic continuation of nurses’ licenses and allows maintaining the generally high professional level among all categories of nurses. According to Mlambo et al (2021), “nurses engage in continuing education by participating in professional development that is relevant to their areas of practice” (p. 62). Thus, narrow-focused training is mandatory for all nurses. At the same time, nurses are encouraged to develop some general skills and knowledge that might be useful for career growth. For instance, one may try to improve cultural awareness or cross-cultural communication, if he or she is going to work abroad or with a certain ethnic group. The CPD leader will help proactive trainees to coordinate and balance their educational program and strategy.
Dameiro Villalobos Boscan – Saturday, February 4, 2023, 11:00 AM
Number of replies: 2
The current technological advances and changes in medical practices and healthcare policies make it essential for healthcare professionals to update their knowledge and skills continuously to ascertain the quality treatment of patients. However, these professionals must first identify existing knowledge and skill gaps while planning to update their knowledge and skills. They can do this, for instance, by appraising existing literature to identify any research gaps that can help them improve their knowledge while also contributing to their various fields. Healthcare professionals can also review the current clinical practices to identify gaps in their skills and then decide on possible strategies to boost their competencies.
Self-reflection is also an important tool that healthcare professionals can use to establish and proactively plan to update their knowledge and skill gaps. According to Cheng et al. (2020), self-reflection creates room for inspection, introspection, thoughtful construction, proactiveness, and transformation.in increases one’s awareness of their values and beliefs, learning experiences, and issues they are facing, among other things. A healthcare professional can build confidence by reflecting on one’s knowledge and clinical expertise (Reljić et al., 2019). At the same time, they could improve their critical thinking skills and develop strategies to fill any knowledge or skill gaps.
Appraising existing practice guidelines can also help healthcare professionals plan on how to update their knowledge and skills. Guerra-Farfan et al. (2022) argue that Clinical Practices Guidelines (CPGs) help clinicians make evidence-based choices critical for better patient outcomes. The CPGs outline issues such as health policies, health education, and competencies that clinicians must abide by to ensure consistency and excellence in clinical care. For instance, a CPG stipulates the professional competencies each healthcare professional must acquire to ensure quality patient care. Some common competencies considered vital by most CPGs are effective communication, patient advocacy, assessment skills, teamwork, and the ability to undertake practice-based learning and improvement. By reviewing these competencies, one would establish their weaknesses and plan to improve their skills or knowledge to boost their competence. Similarly, reviewing current health policies can help healthcare professionals understand the public health issues or challenges they are dealing with and help them plan better ways of resolving these issues.
Finally, healthcare professionals should support and participate in the Continuous Development Programme (CPD) designed by their various institutions. Mlambo et al. (2021) believe that CPD is critical for lifelong learning and keeping healthcare professional skills and knowledge up-to-date. Today, there are jurisdictions like the U.K where nurse practitioners must engage in continuous learning to be competent and fit enough to keep their licensure with their respective professional bodies. The CPD can help create a learning framework and activities to foster continued knowledge and skills growth. It would encourage informal and formal learning through different techniques, including simulation, role-playing, on-the-job training, professional development workshops, online modules, and printed resources.
Denise Valentini
– Monday, February 6, 2023, 12:36 PM
Number of replies: 1
Screening tests are currently widely used to discover risk factors or the presence of a disease even before symptoms. This offers the advantage to the patient of treating the pathology in its early stages, obtaining a cure, or preventing complications. On the other hand, exposing the patient to treatment before becoming ill is only justified if the treatment will lead to a better outcome than treating it later. Public health is looking for a cost-benefit ratio between discovering the disease early and having a positive result with treatment. However, in some instances, this relationship is not justified. The cost-effectiveness of treating the condition does not result in more remarkable survival and even decreases the patient’s quality of life while undergoing treatment. (Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care, 2019) Access to screening tests for the neediest population is also discussed since even though they may know when they have the disease; they do not always have adequate treatment due to the high health costs in the United States.
Health promotion and disease prevention is the goal of every health manager concerned with the population. Providing access to screening tests free of charge for at-risk people is part of the appropriate action plan. Performing a preventive test is only beneficial when the risk of the test causing another problem is very small. For example, performing the Pap test in women of childbearing age and treating precancerous cell changes prevents the development of cervical cancer, performing intestinal endoscopy and removing intestinal polyps that can develop into cancer. Even with these benefits, screening tests can cause some harm to the patient. In the case of bowel endoscopy, the patient who performs the test runs the risk of over-perforation or bleeding during the procedure, leading to complications resulting from the screening test.
For a public health manager to define when and where to focus his efforts and the population’s money can be challenging. In the case of screening tests, the manager should seek information regarding reliability, the benefit to the patient at lower risk, and the group of patients benefiting from the trial. No exam is perfect. The tests have different sensitivity and specificity, scientifically speaking. For example, when the test has high sensitivity, it will be “true positive,” and no person with the disease will go undetected. In the case of high specificity, the test confirms that the patient does not have the condition, being considered “true negative” since the negative result excludes the possibility of the person having the disease. For example, the tuberculosis skin test required of all healthcare professionals to work in clinics and hospitals may have a ‘false positive’ result. (Miao, X.U., at al., 2022) The test determines that the person has the disease, but they do not. Therefore, when the skin test for TB is positive, it is necessary to carry out other confirmatory tests, such as a chest x-ray.
Defining the strategy of action regarding screening tests is a delicate situation. Compared with a seesaw, the manager must seek a balance between benefits and risks for the patient, costs and gifts for the community, the possibility or not of offering treatment when necessary, in addition to improving or not the patient’s quality of life when undergoing treatment to the indicated treatment. It is not just a matter of making the screening test available but what this test will reflect on the patient.
Alejandro Osuna
– Wednesday, February 8, 2023, 8:53 PM
Number of replies: 0
Screening
Medical screening refers to the examination of people who do not present with any signs
of disease to diagnose individuals with a higher chance of developing the disease. The main aim
of medical screening is to ensure that the disease is identified early so there to be better
management and interventions for the illness. Screening has various advantages and
disadvantages; one advantage of screening is that it helps fulfill its purpose, which is the
identification of diseases early so that they can be managed better. Such as, in the case of cancer,
early detection of the illness increases the chances of the individual being successfully treated.
Another advantage of screening is that it reduces the mortality associated with a disease. Such as
screening for cancer has had an impact on the mortality rate in the United States. Screening has
considerable potential in the prevention of individuals from cancer mortality. Modern
mammography screening programs can reduce breast cancer by about 40 percent. Also, the
incidence of cervical cancer has reduced by over half in the past three decades due to screening
(Ma & Richardson, 2022). However, despite the advantages of early disease detection and
preventing the mortality of individuals, medical screening has various disadvantages.
One disadvantage of medical screening is the various unnecessary risks that it exposes
the individuals screening. There is a possibility of hazardous effects that can result from
screening. Various screening tests have a possibility of harm, such as x-rays which can expose
the individual’s body to radiation; endoscopy, in some cases, can also result in bleeding and can
result to serious injuries (Nagao & Warnakulasuriya, 2020). Another disadvantage of screening
is that it can result in false positives, leading to unnecessary anxiety. The screening tests do not
have 100 percent accuracy, and the instances when the individual gets a false positive can cause
the individual to be exposed to other unnecessary tests and even treated as a result of the
screening (Green et al., 2020). And as a result, a false positive may cause individuals to ignore
serious symptoms in the future. Screening tests can also result in overdiagnosis, resulting in the
individual getting unnecessary treatments. The tests utilized in screening are not suitable for
making the diagnosis but rather for the detection of the presence of abnormalities. As such, if the
tests are considered abnormal, the individual is directed to get further tests for closer examination (Nagao &
Warnakulasuriya, 2020).
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