Professional Development Assessment Paper. Health, Medicine, Nursing

Professional Development Assessment Paper
Name
Institutional Affiliate
Professional Development Assessment Paper
Introduction
The delivery of quality health care is a primary objective for health care providers and facilities in the United States and around the world. The United States healthcare system endeavors to achieve the said objective through the provision of affordable care and enhanced patient safety across diverse care settings. However, the increasing cases of patients with chronic diseases or conditions coupled with the equally increasing demand for quality care services pose challenges towards the achievement quality care objective. Healthcare systems thus have to implement effective interventional measures towards curbing the increasing demand for affordable quality health care services. The delivery of quality health care services also refers to increased accessibility to the care services. Among the effective measures embraced by healthcare systems around the world is the expansion of health care delivery platforms through the incorporation of the community as a client for patient care services. Similarly, adjustments to the nursing curriculum to include community health nursing as one of the key elements in the nursing profession serves to enhance the delivery of quality health care by addressing the outlined concerns. Community health nursing increases access to health care services as it attends to the medical needs of patients within both the primary care setting and community settings through hospice and home health care delivery. Community health nursing education has since become a primary element for qualification in the nursing profession. As a practicing nurse in a home health care setting for the critically ill children with previous engagement in hospice care, community health nursing proves to be an integral component in nursing education. Provided herein is a personal professional development assessment based on both the current and past working experiences based on the application of the fundamental elements of the community health nursing course offered at ISU.
Background
The United States is facing an increase in the number of the aging population as well as the patients with chronic illnesses that strains the country’s healthcare system in the effort to deliver quality health care. The equally increasing cases of lifestyle diseases and complications in society are also raising concerns among health care providers. The community thus functions as one of the key sources of the increasing demand for quality health care services, which necessitates the development and implementation of effective interventional measures. Among the interventional measures for addressing the increasing demand for quality health care is the enhancement of community healthcare systems (WHO, 2017). Strengthening or enhancing the community healthcare systems serves to reduce the health risks and threats to societies by sensitizing the community towards embracing healthy lifestyle habits and behaviors (WHO, 2017). Developing the competencies required for effective delivery of the care services within the community setting requires the acquisition of the knowledge and skills embedded in the community health nursing course. The course enhances the competencies of nursing professionals in the application of knowledge and skills in the delivery of health care services in the primary care setting to the community at large. Community health nursing allows students or rather prepares them to meet the health care needs of given populations in society and thus going beyond the needs of the care facilities or healthcare institutions. It calls for the establishment of collaborations with the community to meet the emerging health needs (Valaitis, 2014). The nursing educators are making positive changes to the baccalaureate curriculum by increasing the time spent by nursing students in the community to enhance their competencies across different areas of specialty within the community care setting.
Community health nursing is, therefore, designed to meet the needs of target populations in the community through learning designs developed to address the needs of individuals, groups, families, as well as target populations (Valaitis, 2014). Both hospice and home health nursing care provisions make for some of the learning objectives provided in the community health nursing course. Working in the hospice and home health care setting makes use of the underlying principles or elements defining the community health nursing profession. The successful delivery of quality health care in both the hospice and home health care settings calls for the utilization of the fundamental elements of community health nursing.
Hospice Care Nursing
Among the areas of practice for community health nursing includes the provision of patient care to individuals suffering from terminal illnesses. Hospice care nurses function to attend to the medical needs of patients with chronic illnesses in primary care settings as well as their families. One of the misconceptions that people have about hospice care is that it is like any other type of care only that it comes in a patient’s end-of-life journey. While the above is true of the profession, there is more than meets the eye. Playing the first-hand role of providing care for their patients is quite crucial and helps to ensure that the last phase of a patient’s life is not as painful.
However, as Rome et al. (350), after palliation of the physical pain, nurses also play a crucial role in offering spiritual and psychosocial support to their patients. The death bed can get lonely and the closest confidants patients have are the hospice nurses. In such instances, the formation of emotional bonds between the two can easily happen. Nurses get to walk the journey with their patients and ensure that the entire process is not as painful and lonely as it could be. As patients struggle with issues about God as their death approaches, having close confidants helps in alleviating their concerns. Additionally, it becomes easier for patients to find peace and to deal with their fears in a safe space.
Aside from the above, there is also the aspect of hospice nurses showing love and compassion in their provision of care. What this does is build a connection that, for some, lasts way past the death of the patients. Life has a way of watering down truly deep moments and the social connections and bonds patients in palliative care make with hospice nurses have fallen victim to the same. There are instances where normal routines by hospice nurses turn into springs of hope for clients. It could be that a nurse was walking in to do their routine check-up and this simple gesture would be enough to alleviate the fears a patient has. So, there are many lessons one gets to learn as a hospice nurse.
Home Health Care
As Curtis et al. (330), critically ill children affect the lives of everyone around them. Their parents often end up shattered and the children, who often do not know the danger they are in, simply hang on to the hope that their caregivers will help them get better. There are many similarities between hospice and home health care. In hospice care, the focus is solely on the patients who are nearing the end of their lives. For this lot, so...