Nursing and health reform
Introduction
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a legislativereform set to improve the health care delivery to patients. It ranges from their ability to acquire health services to the effectiveness of the interventions offered to patients when they seek healthcare. Healthcare acquisition by all members of the society is enhanced in this act in what is commonly referred to as the Obama care(Grady, 2014).The provisions outlined in this act has the major role in improving the quality of service given to patients. Nurses were the building blocks of the health care team are likely to experience some changes in their scope of practice. The major provisions that influence the nursing practice are outlined in this text.
One of the provisions that may influence the nursing practice is the aspect of focusing on the outcomes of the plan of care as opposed to the volume of the service provided. Previously, most nurses based their practice on the number of people that they were able to care for. However, the new provisionsinsistthat nurses should be more concerned about the effectiveness of their plan of care and how well the set interventions are likely to achieve the set goals of care. It is therefore important that this provisionaims at improving the level of care and ensuring patient satisfaction (Hartmann, 2013)
Other than this, another provision gives nurses a mandate to influence practice and policies. It is because nurses are considered to be the governing body of the healthcare team as they act as alink between various health care providers and the patient. They are therefore indebted to promote the level of care given to the patient by influencing practice (Gruber, 2011).
From the illustration of the above provisions, it is evident that The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Actaims at improving the quality of nursing practice and it gives the nurses a mandate in ensuring that patients receive quality health care services.
References
Grady P. (2014). Charting future directions in nursing research: NINR’s innovative questions initiative. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 46(3), 143.
Gruber, Jonathan (2011). “The Impacts of the Affordable Care Act: How Reasonable Are the Projections?”. National Tax Journal.
Hartman M., Martin A., Benson J., Catlin A. (2013). National health spending in 2011: Overall growth remains low, but some payers and services show signs of acceleration. Health Affairs.
