Future Of Nursing: Part 2
Last week I wrote on the topic of the Future of Nursing about the ANA article with 9 nursing leaders predicting what they saw in the future for the nursing profession. I added my own thoughts but as I sat with this more, I have some additional thoughts to share.
Certainly, coming from a business owner’s perspective, I have always been bothered why nursing services come with the hospital room just as do dietary and housekeeping.
Nurses possess a unique body of knowledge, and their services should be billable based on the acuity of the patient just as are those of physicians.
Let’s face it: the reason patients are in the hospital is for nursing care. It is the expertise and assessment ability of nurses to assess, plan, intervene and evaluate that helps patients eventually get well enough to be discharged.
What if patients and/or their families were given a profile of all the available nurses so that they could choose those from whom they would receive care? Those selected would then be paid for their services at a higher rate.
Nurses would have to market themselves to show their skill set as well as why they would be the best candidate to care for that patient.
Nurses would feel valued and appreciated because they would then know they were selected specifically for that patient’s care.
I think it would be interesting if nurses presented themselves, as do business owners, on the points of their value, worth and why the patient should choose them.
With hospitals taking the largest share of the payment for the hospitalization off the top, nurses deserve to be paid for their value as well.
If nurses were chosen as business owners, there still would be some form of quality assurance to make sure that the nurses are practicing within the standard of care and that the patients were getting what they needed. However, there would be no charge nurse or boss monitoring every action of the nurse.
As professionals, we should be trusted to do our jobs.
I also think healthcare is moving away from the traditional insurance model to where we turn our country’s focus from sick care to wellness care.
Nurses are great health and wellness coaches and can help people with wellness, compliance issues for chronic disease, all at a much lower cost than the premium for the insurance or the copay for other providers. Our country would have healthier citizens that live longer and would be more productive.
