In the United States the
issues of skyrocketed healthcare cost and shortage of primary care physician
are more prevalent. Healthcare reform is the sizzling debate's topic between legislator
and savvy people. Although some reluctant forces do not want to collaborate and
give autonomy to Nurse Practitioners, NPs work has already proved that they can be the best solution of the existing shortages of primary care physician and increased healthcare cost. For this reason today I am going to reveal the importance of
Nurse practitioner involvement in politics to gain increased autonomy over mandatory collaboration.
Moreover, resolving
the concern of primary care provider shortage and minimize the healthcare cost,
Nurse Practitioners act as resolution. The political involvement of Nurse Practitioners assist in transforming the
health care system and filling the gap of primary care physician in the under-served
areas. All Nurse Practitioners and nursing associations should determinedly
work together with policy makers to achieve reasonable and justifiable quality
healthcare for all citizen including 48 million uninsured Americans, then only
it is possible to change the mandatory collaboration. Pericak
(2011) addressed that the solution of Physician Shortage can be done by
increasing Nurse Practitioners Autonomy. Washington, New
Hemisphere and Texas are the examples, who already succeeded in breaking the
statutory collaborative practices because they worked together with the
legislators. They did not give up their tenacious effort and unity with other
advanced practice nurses. In addition, Texas was stricter in mandatory
collaboration than New York, so New York NPs have
to be inspired by the Texas NPs. They should be unified to focusing the
social, economic, and political obstacles of healthcare, after that NPs can magnificently
able to use their power to influence judicial decision.
Furthermore, Association of
American Medical Colleges (2008) depicted similar facts regarding the declined
interest of medical student towards primary care. The medical school graduates
of the United States choosing family medicine decreased by nearly 27% from 2002
to 2007 and the overall deficit of primary care providers are expected to
worsen. Also, Healthy people 2020 outlined healthcare access, individual
behavior, social environment, physical environment and genetics as the
determinants of health and NPs are well educated to address these issues. Nurse
practitioners can give high quality of patient centered care with nearly
155,000 solutions for this scarcity of primary care by lowering the cost
(American Academy of Nurse practitioner, 2012). So, NPs can conjure up the cost
of healthcare issues and fulfill the scarcity of primary care physician.
In contrast, even NPs can be a
good reason for the solution of primary care providers' crisis, because of
mandatory collaboration they are not allowed to practice in the underserved
areas, where there is deficiency of physician to collaborate. Additionally, Burgess and Purkis (2010,
December) mentioned that politics plays the vital role for the autonomy of
Nurse Practitioner and requires collaboration at all levels of healthcare
system for the improvement of their role integration. Burgess, Martin, and Senner (2011) found five
keys for the NP role integration; role autonomy is one of them and pointed out
that inconsistent support from site managers and policy leaders is a barrier.
Nurses are the center of
healthcare system and there can be no healthcare systems without nurses. As the
Patient protection and affordable healthcare act emphasized preventive approach
through primary care settings, more nurse practitioners will be needed. Since,
the number of doctors' interest in primary care is decreasing every year, to
fill this void NPs require more autonomy and this can be achieved when they are
connected to legislatures or work together to formulate policy. Furthermore,
Nurse Practitioner should maintain their quality of education and sound
practice to deliver affordable and quality services in underserved areas and
throughout the world.
References
Association of American Medical Colleges (2008). Why is
there a shortage of primary care doctors? Retrieved from https://www.aamc.org/linkableblob/70310-6/data/primarycarefs-data.pdf
American Academy of Nurse Practitioner (2012). What’s an
NP? Retrieved from http://www.aanp.org/all-about-nps/what-is-an-np
Burgess,
J.,& Purkis,
ME (2010). The power and politics of collaboration in nurse practitioner role development. PubMed.org. 17(4):297-308. Doi:
10.1111/j.1440-1800.2010.00505.x.
Burgess, J., Martin, A., & Senner, M., (2011). A
framework to assess nurse practitioner role integration in primary health care:
Canadian Journal of Nursing Research, 43(1): 22-40
Pericak, A. (2011). Increased autonomy for nurse
practitioners as a solution to the physician shortage. Journal of the New
York State Nurses Association, 42(1-2), 4-7. PMID: 22187859
NLM UID: 7507218
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