Enhancing Service Quality and Delivery in Nursing Research Paper

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Competencies of IOM

The Institute of Medicine is an American organization founded in 1972 with the aim of training health workers, unlike other medical organizations aimed at profit making. As a non-profit organization, IOM has made remarkable progress, starting from the programs offered to the quality of services and qualifications of health personnel. Unlike earlier years when the organization offered training in only primary levels of medicine, presently IOM offers secondary and tertiary postgraduate programs in medicine, public health, traditional medicine among others. Services like neurosurgery, urology, and Cardiothoracic are now available in almost all health facilities in the United States.

Because of the tertiary programs offered by IOM, health professions highly specialized in these areas offers quality medical services and medical care to the general public. The health sector has greatly improved, and the public receives quality medical services and medical care. IOM managed to accomplish this by putting in place ways of keeping up with the changing trends in the health sector. Core competencies for nurse education are one of the ways IOM manages to produce competent and qualified healthcare givers. These competencies are responsible for the enhancement in the quality of health care services provided in healthcare facilities in the United States and also the overall positive change in hospitals around the country (O'Leary, Afsar-Manesh, Budnitz, Dunn, Myers, 2011).

Core Competencies of IOM

The Institute of Medicine is an American-based non-governmental organization, established in the year 1972. Its establishment was under Tribhuvan University, and its main responsibility was to train healthcare workers in the United States. At the start of its operation, middle level programs such as traditional medicine, radiology, nursing, pharmacy, and physiotherapy were given much importance compared to other health areas. IOM's institutional goals, however, changed as the years went by because of a change in the needs of health workers in the country (McNeal, 2013). There arose a new responsibility of training health professionals in the tertiary level programs like adult nursing, community nursing, and pediatric nursing. In the year 1982, a teaching hospital was completed that currently provides medical services to the general public. The hospital is also a center for learning, teaching, and research programs run by IOM. As from the year 2008, specialized surgery training programs available in the hospital include areas like neurosurgery, urology, gastroenterology, Cardiothoracic, and vascular. Currently, IOM runs programs, including postgraduate degrees in medicine, paramedical, public health, nursing and traditional medicine. The organization is internationally recognized today as a source of expertise and advice on a large number of issues and topics in the advancement of public health, education, and health sciences (Edlin, 2013).

As years went by, the health sector kept changing, and IOM had to come up with ways of keeping up with the changing trends in the field of medicine. The role of nurses and the health personnel kept evolving as the mode of delivery of health care services changed locally and internationally. In order to keep up with rising international trends in medicine, there arose a necessity for IOM to develop a health care system that provides care in a holistic manner by promoting health, enhancing the quality of human life, and enabling health development of humans (Stucky et al., 2010). The role of nurses, therefore, evolved to include the delivery of primary, secondary, and tertiary health care. IOM saw the need to avail qualified and competent healthcare professionals to enhance the delivery of quality healthcare services to the public. Nurses had to develop competencies, in addition to the role of providing care to provide lifelong holistic care adequately. Nurses' new roles today include health promotion, educating people on health issues, counselling, case management, care coordination, client advocating, and researching (Golemboski, Otto, & Morris, 2013). The five core competencies of IOM have made it possible for these health professionals perform their tasks efficiently. This essay will discuss the competencies and their implications for nursing education.

Nursing can be defined as a caring, enabling, and competence-assessed profession that progressively meets the ever-changing health needs of people in society. The profession's commitment is to promote and maintain good health and caring for the sick and disabled people in society. Nursing functions by solving problems and collaborating with the client and other professionals in the health sector in order to achieve mutually agreed health goals (Golemboski, Otto, & Morris, 2013). The provision of client-centered holistic care requires professional knowledge and skills by implementing the nursing process. Therefore, a nurse has to adopt a caring and responsible attitude by upholding ethical values and being effective communicators via good interpersonal skills.

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For one to have these qualifications, the IOM five core competencies must be applied (Edlin, 2013).

Competence refers to the necessary attitudes, skills, knowledge, and the ability for a nurse to perform well in the range or roles in the nursing profession. Core competencies are the essential characteristics that registered nurses are expected to possess after completing their nursing education practice. Every nurse must possess these competencies at entry of practice so as to provide ethical, safe, and effective healthcare to the public. The five competency areas include research, management and leadership, health promotion and health education, professional, legal and ethical nursing practice, and personal effectiveness and professional development. These competencies involve facilitating learning, facilitating learner development and socialization, using assessment and evaluation strategies, and participating in the evaluation of various programs. It also includes functioning as a change agent and leader, pursuing continuous quality improvement in the nurse educator role, engaging in scholarships, and functioning within the educational environment (Golemboski, Otto, & Morris, 2013).

In Professional, Legal, and Ethical Nursing Practice, nurses are caregivers in the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels in the area of health. They should be able to apply nursing theories correctly, apply problem-solving skills and therapeutic techniques in performing nursing duties safely, ethically, and legally. They must have an overall knowledge in nursing and be able to use cognitive, psychomotor, and psychosocial skills in the caring process. Nurses must also have positive and ethical attitudes and also be well conversant with technology. During health promotion and education, nurses play the role of educators, counselors, care coordinators, health promoters, and client advocates. Therefore, they must work with other care providers in the health sector, the clients, and the community at large in promoting good health of individuals in society. Skills required include education, skills, communication skills, problem-solving skills, and advocating skills (O'Leary, Afsar-Manesh, Budnitz, Dunn, Myers, 2011).

In Management and Leadership, nurses take up the roles of managers, change agents, leaders, supervisors, and public health advocates. Nurses must have the ability to effectively manage and lead, initiate and implement change, positively contribute to the formulation of health care policies by working with other health professionals, access and manage risks, and crises. They should have managerial skills, political skills and leadership skills for them to accomplish the tasks efficiently. Positive accommodating and objective attitudes are very vital in such cases. In Research, the significant role that nurses take up is that of researchers. They should be able to use the knowledge and skills from the research in the community and most importantly, have the ability to analyze, interpret, and apply data in the health profession. The essential things include research skills and objective, realistic and positive attitudes. Personal Effectiveness and Professional Development needs nurses to use their professional knowledge as health professionals. Nurses must maintain their well-being in all aspects and also keep their status as professional registered nurses. In order to achieve this, they must lead healthy lifestyles, have stress management skills, have public speaking skills, and be enthusiastic and confident in life (Stucky et al., 2010).

These five competencies are crucial to nursing because they foster the enhanced preparation of the caregiver in the delivery of quality health care services. By facilitating learning in schools, laboratories and clinical settings, cognitive, psychomotor, and affective outcomes desired by the health profession are achieved. By facilitating learning and socialization, more nurses with the values and behaviors of effective health professionals are developed. In turn, the health workforce increases and the more the workforce, the better the services provided (McNeal, 2013). The ability of nurses to assess and evaluate different strategies is beneficial to the learning process as they are able to assess students in all domains of learning accurately. Such aspects are invaluable because proper evaluation of students by nurse educators means reduced workload for educators in the health sector. According to O'Leary, Afsar-Manesh, Budnitz, Dunn, Myers, (2011), participating in the designing and evaluation of curricula and programs gives nurses the opportunity to reflect on contemporary healthcare trends affecting the healthcare environment. It is thus beneficial because it is people on the ground that provide feedback, hence making it easy to find solutions to problems affecting health (Edlin, 2013).

The core competencies ensure that the health profession has well trained and qualified health caregivers that can handle patients well. Nurses with professional and ethical knowledge about health care prescribe the right medication to….....

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