Image of Nursing Assignment Name of the student Institutional affiliation Date Introduction Nursing is a profession that is critical to the healthcare sector. Nurses care for patients in the be ...

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Image of Nursing Assignment
Name of the student
Institutional affiliation
Date
Introduction
Nursing is a profession that is critical to the healthcare sector. Nurses care for patients in the best way possible, creating rapport and better understanding of the patient that guides the medical plans and treatments the patients receive. Nurses go out of their way to ensure that patients get the best of care based on the resource availability in the healthcare system. Despite the efforts of many nurses, healthcare facility administrators are not supportive leading to instances of improper patient care, nurse burnout and high rates of turnover. This paper will discuss two articles by Theresa Brown, one in 2019 and the other in 2021, to understand their context and the issues faced by nursing professionals in the American healthcare system.
The Articles
In the first article (Brown, 2019), the author discusses the plight of nurses in their efforts to ensure that patients get the best treatment and in the most appropriate time through the use of workarounds. Her priority for nurses is that they should be supported by the management and healthcare administrators to always put the priority of the patient first. The nurses strive to attain that as witnessed in workarounds, where nurses hide medicine to avoid bureaucracy that slows down the process of patient care. Administrators should aim at helping nurses save valuable time that dictates life or death situations for patients. Inefficient hospital bureaucracies have an impact on the patient and also on the nurse that is already overworked, leading to time wastage and elements of burnout.
From the second article (Brown, 2021), the author focuses on the needs of nurses during the pandemic period. One of their priorities for nursing is appropriate levels of staffing that will help prevent the burnout experienced during the covid-19 era and also eliminate health risks associated with understaffing. The author identifies that the nursing profession is not taken seriously and that contributions it has to healthcare are not appreciated. She clearly identifies nursing as the backbone of healthcare. Despite that, administrators and healthcare managers seem not to understand the pain that nurses go through in the process of caring for their patients. Her priority therefore focuses on having a sector that is well staffed to avoid the unnecessary pressure that nurses go through. The belief is that healthcare facilities should focus on increasing nurses, but instead focus on using them as a way of reducing operational costs. During the covid-19 period many nurses were retrenched and salaries cut despite the long working hours and poor nurse to patient levels that were experienced.
Conclusion
All in all, it is clear of the special role that nurses play in ensuring that patients get optimum healthcare. Their efforts are however derailed by the lack of support through the healthcare system and the immense pressures that are brought about by healthcare managers and administrators. The latter seem not to understand the plight of nursing and that nurses work in the best interests of the patient. The aim of the administration is more focused on profit making other than the major reason the healthcare facilities were established; to promote patient healthcare and improve on wellbeing.
References
Brown, T. (2019). The American medical system is one giant workaround. The New York Times, 23. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/opinion/hospital-workaround-health-care.htmlBrown, T. (2021). Covid-19 Is ‘Probably Going to End My Career’. The New York Times, 23. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/opinion/nursing-crisis-coronavirus.html