Question

NURS 6565 Week 11 Discussion: Social Change Agent During NP clinical practicum experiences, we identify, as nurses, many health care issues that need to be addressed at the local, state, or national level. Addressing the need for change in health care policy is now an intricate part of your role as a social change agent. For this Discussion, you will identify a change needed in your community and what your nursing legacy for positive social change will be. To prepare: Consider the health care issues and deficits you have recognized in your professional practice. Identify a change needed in your community in health care policy and discuss how you could impart change during your career as an NP. Consider your future as a NP and what your nursing legacy will be. How will you impart Social Change? By Day 3 Post a change needed in your community and an explanation for how you will begin to implement that change. Then, share with your colleagues a brief explanation of what your nursing legacy will be and how will you impart Social Change.

Answer 1

" Professional fulfillment is not always achieved by what we get but more so by what we leave behind."

-Linda Laskowski Jones

In nursing profession the nurses are work centric. There work is basically focuses on gaining expertize i.e certification, education, income. But they do not think of what is being offered back to the profession by them.

One of the major health care issue or deficit that I have noticed in our setting is the lack of adequate resources to carry out our works. This is in terms of materialistic and human resources. The management tends to provide insufficient equipments, items needed for basic care and expects nurses to deliver advanced quality nursing care with it.

For Example: shortage of articles like gloves, mask, syringes,gown, Iv sets, bedsheets, underpads etc. The nurses in order to finish their work on time and to give care has to run from different departments to lend these things. Its not only a wastage of time but also efforts of the nurses on duty.

Secondly its the lack of adequate nurses in department to keep up right nurse patient ratio. It greatly effects quality of care given. It also increases the workload on nurses and the consequences sometimes are error or malpractice.In case of emergency nurse are pulled out to other wards for managing staffing, where they lack expertize and commit errors.

In community various health issues prevail that needs to be identified and resolved with a cooperative team effort. In this modern era of medicine, there is invention of large number of new technologies that have made healthcare industry an expensive area and also added up many advanced methods of treating illness. But in a community, do all of its members have this knowledge regarding these advance made in healthcare? Do they have the assess to avail those benefits? I think still they are not aware of it.

To explain it better let me frame a personal experience. In my society, there is a family who have two children. The elder is a son who was repeatedly complaining of tiredness, back pain, numbness of his lower limbs. At first the parents thought its just a normal back pain due to over stress because of the anxious activities of the child. Later when the complaint persisted the pushed his to hospital where he was diagnosed to have a spinal cord tumor and tumor located in such a way that no further treatment was possible only prophylactic management. Unfortunately the young boy was dead within a month. After a month of his death, we saw an article in the newspaper stating the availability of treatment for his case in a hospital in other city. The parents where very upset as they could not know about the such a treatment when their child was alive.

As a Nurse Practitioner, I would like to bring change in this present scenario. This will be my legacy to impart as much as knowledge I can to the various families in the community regarding the availability of such new advanced treatments. In other words, we the nurses tend to act as a mediator to communicate the changes taking place in the field of healthcare. Not only just an information about the existence of such regimens but also ways to approach them. As a Nurse Practitioner, in order to bring a change in society,the following things can be implemented in a community.

• firstly I will have to find a group of nurses who have the same thought about the situation explained and have willingness to make a change in the society.
• For this,we nurses need to educate ourselves with all modern aspects in health care.
• There should be a group of nurses basically who will deliver these information in various areas like primary health centers, sub centers, community health centers.
• initially nurses need to identify the various health issues of the areas and then in the meeting of these nurses, they should put forward all these identified health issues.
• Knowledge about the new technologies relating to such issues or an existing regimen about which they are unaware, should be imparted by means of role play, group discussions, home visits, collaboration with various self help groups.
• Distribution of pamphlets, cards and other educative materials will help to create awareness.
• As a NP, I will have to find a good financier who would help me in supporting these activities financially. For this different healthcare institutions will be requested and also participation of certain voluntary health organization is highly appreciated.

At last its a hope that our joined hands shall bring a positive change in the society that will easy the live of human reducing the consequences resulting from unawareness.

" You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility of it, unless you see yourselves belonging to it and responsible of changing it. "

-Grace Lee Boggs