NURS1103 : Nursing Practice
Question:
Margaret has been out of the work force for 23 years, electing to stay at home and take care of her three children while her husband worked. Her youngest is in his third year of college, and Margaret has realized that she needs to return to the workforce.
During her husband’s hospitalization, Margaret realized that she missed nursing and eagerly looks forward to returning to active practice. She kept her license active all these years, but during her husband’s hospitalization, Margaret saw that much has changed since she left her last nursing position.
Consider these questions:
What specific challenges does Margaret face in returning to the nursing workforce after 23 years?
What has changed in health care that will make her work different now?
What do you think is the same in nursing over time?
Answer:
While it may not prove difficult for a nurse to reenter a job after a short while, 23 years is quite a lot of time. Therefore, someone choosing to return to practice after such a long period is likely to encounter several challenges. Duffield, Graham, Donoghue, Griffiths, Bichel?Findlay, & Dimitrelis, (2015) among these challenges includes loss of memory due to old age. It is obvious that knowledge if not reinforced is likely to fade with time. Other challenges may include deterioration of personal health and productivity which may lower the quality of service and also reduce the competence of the nurse. Other challenges may be caused by the emergence of new diseases, the generic nature of drugs and some changes in the operations which may require different skills that the nurse may not have acquired or may have forgotten.
Change as they say is imminent and inevitable. In nursing practice, changes are caused by several factors such as; mutations of disease causing organisms which requires the use of new medicines Kingma, (2018). Change in how practice is carried out due to development of new knowledge and skills from research. Other changes in health care are influenced by government policy, law and other guidelines set by the hospitals or the regulatory bodies. The model of care and styles of leadership also change from time to time depending on the leaders and the nature of operations at the hospital.
There are however several constants that either never change at all or they take so long to change and are therefore not likely to have changed in the span of 20 years. These includes most of the basic tasks such as dressing a wound, drug administration techniques, human anatomy and physiology and drug functioning in the body.
Reference:
Duffield, C., Graham, E., Donoghue, J., Griffiths, R., Bichel?Findlay, J., & Dimitrelis, S. (2015). Why older nurses leave the workforce and the implications of them staying. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 24(5-6), 824-831.
Kingma, M. (2018). Nurses on the move: Migration and the global health care economy. Cornell University Press.
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