ROLE OF NURSING

Role of Nursing in Managing Change

Role of Nursing in Managing Change

Introduction

In such a rapidly developing environment as health and social care, change is a constant feature just like it is in the everyday lives of the people. A critical analysis of the leader's role in managing change in the current Irish healthcare system is quite necessary in the present times. Nurses are facing some major challenges in this regard to adjust themselves in the current global economic crisis. All these factors indicate that nurses should play a vital role to bring a change in the healthcare system. It is not an easy task, but the nurses have ability in contributing their efforts for bringing change in the healthcare system. The activities that nurses can perform for bringing change in the healthcare system will be the major part of the topic. Therefore, all the issues related to the role of nursing in managing change will be discussed in detail.

The internal and external basis of change in Nursing

During the last half of the 20th century, there were cyclical nursing shortages resolved by the efforts of nurse educators, and, nurse administrators to recruit more students into programs. Associate degree nursing programs, noted above, and proposed in the 1950s in response to nursing shortages after both World War II and the Korean War. Schools that lowered their admission and, retention standards commonly experienced greater failure rates on the national nursing licensure examination that all graduates take for licensure as registered nurses. In the late 1980s, an acute shortage of nurses resulted in a conflict between the leadership of major nursing organizations (predominantly women) and the leadership of the American Medical Association (AMA) (predominantly men). The AMA proposed the creation of a new category of health care workers, registered care technologists (RCTs), to address this nursing shortage (Carney, 2009, 414).

In the early 1990s, a new set of forces ended a nursing shortage. The expansion of managed care as the driving force for reimbursement of health care services decreased the lengths of stay and rates of admission for inpatient services. Managed care organizations slashed the reimbursement for these services in hospitals, where about two thirds of nurses got employed. Hospitals reduced the numbers of inpatient beds, used unlicensed assistive personnel to carry out nursing tasks and decreased the size of their registered nurse workforce to save costs. The media featured stories about the reductions in workforces of health care organizations. Such stories noted how changes in health care delivery were resulting in problems related to quality of care and were increasing patient dissatisfaction. Nursing leaders tried to stem this tide but were unable to hold it back. Nursing organizations launched media campaigns to encourage interest in nursing, but the response from the public was slow (Chen, 2010, 1012).

Steps in Change Process

1. Empathy and support: When employees feel that those managing change are attentive to their concerns and are more willing to provide information, it helps to establish collaborative ...