Health Policy Article and Letter Assignment Instructions
Overview
The instructions cover the two article and letter assignments. You will address an issue related to a specific legislative policy that affects healthcare in a written article that follows current APA format that you would follow for a paper. Then, you will use your findings to compose a letter that you could send to a legislator.
Instructions
The article must include the following:
- Description of the legislative policy with a negative or positive impact on healthcare or public health
- Explanation of why the policy is harmful or helpful to healthcare and ultimately to the delivery of quality patient care
- Impact of the policy from a cost perspective
- Recommendation(s) for policy revision or replacement
The article must be 400–500 words, cite at least 2 peer-reviewed journal articles for support, integrate a biblical worldview, and follow current APA format. The article you write in modules 2 and 6 must address a different legislative policy.
In addition to the article, you will compose a letter for those concerned about the issue addressed in the article to personalize and send to the appropriate legislator(s). The letter must outline the issue and recommendation(s) for policy revision or replacement and seek the endorsement of the legislator(s). The letter must be 200–250 words and follow current APA format contained after the reference page.
Health Policy Article and Letter
The issue I will address is nurse staff shortage. Ghafoor et al., (2021) reveal that a shortage of nurses affects a nation’s healthcare setting and patient care, resulting into overall health decline in a nation, U.S included. Factors like cost-cutting decisions trigger nurse staff shortages, increased patient need, aging population, and an aging workforce that stress the working conditions for nurses impacting patient care and overall results.
Registered Nurse Staffing Act of 2015 Act and its impact on healthcare
Nurse staff shortage is related to Registered Nurse Staffing Act of 2015, which affects healthcare positively. The policy was created to protect patients by creating safe nursing levels in hospitals. Registered Nurse Staffing policy amends the Medicare of Social Security Act, requiring all hospitals participating in Medicare to execute a hospital-wide staffing plan for the nursing services equipped in hospitals (Congress.gov, n.d.).
Policy help healthcare and delivery of quality patient care
The policy is helpful to healthcare as its essential purpose is ensuring patient safety, minimizing readmissions, and enhance nurse retention. It thus requires a plan to appropriate the number of RNs provide direct patient-based care in all units in every shift of the hospital first to guarantee staffing levels addressing distinctive characteristics of hospital units and patients and secondly result in the provision of safe, quality based patient care reliable with identified needs. This policy also requires every hospital on board to create a nurse staffing team to execute such plans. Besides, it sets forth protections against retaliation and discrimination, including patients or staff of the hospital for any complaints or involvement in inquiries relating to such a plan. It is a fact that appropriate nurse staffing leads to enhanced patient results and great satisfaction for patients and healthcare staff. It also affect the nurses’ capacity to provide safe, quality-based care in all practice settings. Eliminating unsafe nurse staffing practices provide better health care for all people (McKeown et al., 2019).
Cost perspective
The policy is associated with protecting nurses and patients to provide excellent care (Congress.gov, n.d.). It guarantees patients’ safety by reducing the number of negative patient events, medical-based errors, and preventable hospital-acquired illnesses and injuries. Therefore, it cuts costs after reducing the number of unnecessary hospital stays, amount of negative patient events, and also hospital-based readmissions.
Recommendation for policy revision
One significant recommendation for the policy is on the issue of its many variables affecting results and staffing. The complexity of unit, amount of care patient requires based on their condition and severity, unit census, staff experience, and if other nurses such as charge nurses and educators are assigned patients all get affected by nurse-to-patient ratios.
The recommendation should go hand in hand with the biblical worldview that says man is made in God’s image, living in the essence as God’s co-regent over creation and thus has intrinsic worth and should be accorded the care required (Grove Christian School, 2019). The other issue I would recommend for adjustments is inability to determine the work nurses contributes. Discharges, admissions, patients leaving the unit, and patients transferring from other units affect the flow of patients, which may mean nurses are caring for more patients each day, exceeding the ratio required.