CLASS RESPONSES Due 6/3
BY DAY 6 OF WEEK 1
Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days who chose a different national healthcare issue/stressor than you selected. Explain how their chosen national healthcare issue/stressor may also impact your work setting and what (if anything) is being done to address the national healthcare issue/stressor.
RESPONSE 1 Discussion Post
Broome & Marshall (2021) found that the US would have a 293,000 RN surplus by 2030 based on increases to the educational output, but also acknowledged high turnover rates may reduce this surplus. However, this was based on pre-pandemic projections. The current Nurse Workforce Projections estimate a 63,000 RN shortage by 3030 (HRSA, 2020). The nursing shortage drastically affects the Emergency Department (ED). Haddad et al. (2023) showed that nursing shortages lead to errors, higher patient morbidity, and higher mortality rates. Haddad et al. (2023) also showed that burnout, work-life balance, and the aging work force are contributing factors to the shortage. The main two social determinants related to this issue are Education Access and Quality and Health Care Access and Quality (ODPHP, 2020). One of the main ways to address the shortage issue has been the nursing education pipeline. As we saw with COVID the curriculum has been flexible, but does that truly prepare new grads for the real world. Insufficient numbers of nurses directly leads to decreases in quality of healthcare and reduced access. In extreme cases hospitals will have to block off beds because they do not have nurses to care for those patients. The two main things that my facility has done to address the shortage is the use of nurse externs and offering sign-on bonuses. While these both help to attract nurses and nursing students to our facility they don’t address the issue of nurses leaving the bedside, which is outpacing the current production of new nurses.
References
Broome, M. E., & Marshall, E. S. (2021). Transformational leadership in nursing: From expert clinician to influential leader. MBS Direct (3rd ed.). Springer Publishing Company, LLC. Retrieved May 31, 2023, from https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/reader/books/9780826135056/epubcfi/6/6[%3Bvnd.vst.idref%3Dx02_Title]!/4/2/2/12/1:5[ito%2Crs].
Haddad, L. M., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. J. (2023, January). Nursing Shortage. National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493175/
HRSA. (2020, November). Workforce Projections. Workforce projections. https://data.hrsa.gov/topics/health-workforce/workforce-projections
ODPHP. (2020, August 18). Social Determinants of Health. Social Determinants of Health - Healthy People 2030. https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-determinants-health
RESPONSE 2 Main Question Post
The rise in patients suffering from Substance Abuse Disorders (SUD) is the health care issue I have chosen to discuss and analyze. In the 2021 National survey on drug use and health conducted by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 40.0 million people over the age of 12 years in the US reported using an illicit drug within the previous month and 61.2 million people stating they used drugs in the last year.
Currently I am working in the field of Corrections, so SUD is something we deal with on a daily basis. With the prevalence of substance abuse high in the US many of our inmates come in on drug related charges. Then you have the inmates presenting to jail detoxing off multiple substances, having to manage detox symptoms, and manage the health of inmates who are still using substances, illegally, while incarcerated.
Some of the social determinants of health that affect SUD are discrimination and stigma, unemployment, unstable housing, and mental health issues including childhood traumas. Discrimination and stigma cause those suffering from SUD to not seek treatment. Unemployment and unstable housing increase a person's risk of SUD by increasing stressors and landing people in high drug areas. Mental health issues and SUD go hand in hand (Hansen, et al, 2022).
Within the correctional nursing field changes are continuously being made to better serve the SUD patients. Changes in treatment, including medication assisted detox and pre-release drug treatment programs have been found to reduce post release episodes of substance abuse (Mowen, et al, 2019). With such a large part of the inmate population suffering from SUD the field of corrections must stay up to date on best practice treatment of SUD.
Reference
Hansen, H., Jordan, A., Plough, A., Alegria, M., Cunningham, C., & Ostrovsky, A. (2022). Lessons for the Opioid Crisis—Integrating Social Determinants of Health Into Clinical Care. American Journal of Public Health, 112, S109–S111.
Mowen, T. J., Boman, J. H., & Bares, K. J. (2019). Is substance abuse treatment actually ‘treating’? The effectiveness of pre- and post-release substance abuse programming within the reentry process. Criminal Justice Studies: A Critical Journal of Crime, Law & Society, 32(4), 371–385. https://doi.org/10.1080/1478601X.2019.1664507
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2023, January 4). 2021 NSDUH Annual National Report | CBHSQ Data. Samhsa. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2021-nsduh-annual-national-report