Nursing: Review of the Institute of Medicine (IOM)

Nursing: Review of the Institute of Medicine (IOM)
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Nursing: Review of the Institute of Medicine (IOM)
The role of nursing, as one of the major components of the healthcare workforce, has remained at the center of discussion at IOM. In 2011, the IOM in collaboration with Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, published ‘The Future of Nursing report’ with a clarion call to make the nursing profession to be ‘full partners’ with other professionals in the healthcare reengineering (Anderson et al.,2020, Hammonds et al.,2019)
In the IOM report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, the role of nursing in healthcare delivery is extrapolated to reflect the changing dynamics, and the merging needs in healthcare. The IOM report is informed by the health vision established for the American citizens, as enshrined in 2010 comprehensive healthcare legislation. The healthcare legislation contained various enactments that constitute what is called the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act was formed to create an environment where quality and safer healthcare services could be offered to U.S citizens. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, espoused three primary goals (Mazurenko et al., 2018).
The IOM Report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, is based on the Affordable Care Act. The reports distill the implications of the (Affordable Care Act to get what nurses can perform to fulfill the association of the Act. The primary goals and recommendations of the Act could be integrated into nursing. Thus, The IOM Report, prescribes how the goals of the Affordable Care Act, could inform the practices that need to be done to strengthen the nursing profession, as one of the most significant segments of the health care workforce. The IOM Report presented recommendations that would be guided by four critical objectives.
First, it acted as a blueprint in ensuring that nurses do practice to a full degree of their education and training. Nurses are endowed with the potential to lead in innovative approaches that would improve care. However, a range of historical, regulatory, and policy barriers hindered nurses from transforming. Other barriers include the high turnover rate of nurses, fragmentation of the healthcare system, aging workforce, and challenges in the transition from schooling to health workforce. The regulations were also a problem because it limited the scope of practice, but the regulation varies across various states. Some states are in tandem with changing systems because they have responded changes through changing their scope of practice to allow nurses to see patients and prescribe medications. As a result, nurses have advanced to play various roles, including being advanced nurse practitioners.
Second, the report could provide advice on ways of improving nursing education. The IOM recommended that nurses should strive to achieve higher levels of education and training via enhanced education team that promotes seamless academic progression. There was a suggestion that there is a need to establish an improved dedication system that ensures that both current and future nurses can deliver nursing care that is of high quality, safe, and patient-centered. There is a concern that the healthcare setting is getting more complex and calls for the need for well-trained nurses who can care for sicker and frailer patients. To respond appropriately, nurses must train at higher levels. Nurses ought to join degree courses immediately after entering workforce force, and an environment that allows a seamless transition from degree to doctorate should be encouraged.
Third, the IOM report was expected to illustrate and support ways that provide opportunities for nurses to take leadership roles and to serve adequately as partners in healthcare improvements and design. Strong leadership is a necessary ingredient for transforming healthcare. To achieve this goal, nurses must produce leaders through the system from the healthcare setup to boardrooms (Alichnie, & Snook, 2017). As leaders, they should act as partners with other healthcare professionals. Leadership elements should transcend all positions of nursing and which can be used to nurture mutual collaboration. A full partnership in nursing would mean that one takes the responsibility of identifying problems, planning implementations, tracking progress, and making suitable adjustments. Nurses should hold a stake in policy-making a have a say in what constitutes a reform in terms of active participation in advisory committees, boards, or commissions.
Finally, the report served to improve data collection in terms of health workforce planning and policy-making. It is important to get granular details on the health workforce to allow proper planning and balancing of skills and perspectives among nurses, physicians, and other healthcare professionals. This objective can be taatined if sufficient data are collected about human health resource
There are more than 3 million nurses, which make it to be the single largest health human resource, and they spend relatively more amount of time with patients (Dreifuers et al., 2016). Then, by...