IOM: Transforming Education System

Introduction

Institute of Medicine (IOM) is a nonprofit institute that was established in the year 1970 as a constituent of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (USNAS), which works exterior to the structure of government to offer evidence-based (EB) research as well as proposals for public health along with science policy. Also, the IOM is a voluntary membership organization. The organization was established with a responsibility and the mandate of training the entire healthcare manpower required in the country (Holmes, 2011). The IOM report on the future of nursing about leading change and advancing health is a systematic assessment of the way the roles, responsibilities, as well as nursing education, are supposed to change. This is to meet the needs of the aging population, gradually more varied population and meet a multifaceted, growing healthcare system. The report’s recommendations focused on the critical connection flanked by patients’ healthcare needs across the years and the nursing workforce readiness. The intention of the recommendations is holding up efforts to perk up healthcare for all Americans by enhancing nurses’ roles in the care delivery (Finkelman & Kenner, 2009).

This paper focuses on the second IOM key message that states, “Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression.” It also employs the third and sixth education recommendation (That is #3 “Implement nurse residency programs” and, #6 “Ensure that nurses engage in lifelong learning”).

Summary of the IOM Future of Nursing Report

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) financed the Committee on the RWJF of Nursing, at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) as well as its report, “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health” in 2010. The IOM report remains a systematic assessment of the nursing personnel. However, the recommendations presented in the report concentrated on the significant intersection flanked by the healthcare needs of different dynamic patient populaces across the lifetime as well as the accomplishments of the nursing labor force. These commendations were intended to hold up efforts to perk up the U.S. citizen’s health via the involvements of nurses in delivering healthcare. Ideally, the eight commendations presented in the report were focused on four major issues:

• Nurses are supposed to perform to the full degree of their training and education.
• Nurses are expected to accomplish higher heights of education along with training via an enhanced education scheme, which promotes faultless academic sequence.
• Nurses ought to be full associates, with doctors as well as other healthcare experts, in revamping healthcare in the U.S.
• Efficient labor force planning as well as policy-making needs a better collection of data as well as information infrastructure (Aiken, 2011).

The report remains planned to double as a structure for transformations in the nursing career and the healthcare delivery structure. These nurse-led resolutions are aimed at individual legislators, national state along with local government heads, payers, healthcare researchers, administrators and professionals (incorporating nurses and others) and to larger groups, for instance, education institutions, licensing bodies, plus philanthropic and sponsorship organizations, particularly those advocating for users (Aiken, 2011).

At the end of the day, the IOM recommendations concentrate on the significant intersection flanked by the healthcare needs of varied populations across the duration and the accomplishments of the nursing labor force. Founded on these recommendations, it remains clear that the U.S. will require educating and training nurses to take care of many spots of medicine as well as to help to create a patient-centered healthcare scheme in case healthcare reform will be flourishing and improving healthcare and reducing costs (Aiken, 2011).

Explanation and Analysis of IOM: Transforming Education System and Its Relevance to Professional Nursing Practice

Nurses practice in numerous healthcare settings, including schools, hospitals, homes, long-term healthcare facilities, retail health clinics, battlefields, as well as community and public healthcare centers. They have differing heights of education along with competencies (from approved practical nurses, who significantly have a say to direct patient healthcare in nursing residences, to nurse scientists researching and evaluating more efficient modes of taking care of patients and upholding health. The IOM committee regarded nurses across settings, roles, as well as education heights in its attempt to envisage the outlook of the profession. The U.S. has the chance to change its healthcare system, as well as nurses, is capable of and is supposed to play an essential responsibility in this transformation. On the other hand, the authority to perk up the present regulatory, business, as well as organizational states does not rely exclusively on nurses; businesses, government, professional associations, healthcare organizations, along with the insurance industry entirely have to play a role (Cohen, 2011; Tanner, 2011).

The responsibility of continuing education (CE) will remain vital in understanding the IOM commendations. However, the report remains significance in a way that it elaborates on the CE for nurses. The CE needs to cover numerous areas of training as well as education; it will as well need to concentrate on team-based advances for working together with other physicians that also denotes that CE for medical doctors will have to concentration on interacting with nurses. Consequently, CE has to play a significant role in appreciating the possible advantages of healthcare reform by perking up the responsibility nurses play in the healthcare system along with improving the outcomes of patients (Sherwood & Horton-Deutsch, 2012).

Nurses all through the globe are called to labor in a healthcare setting under improvement as on no account imagined before. However, the needs of patients have turned out to be more complex; nurses have to implement necessary capabilities in management, healthcare policy, organization development, EB practice, research, as well as collaboration and teamwork so as to convey high-quality healthcare. On the same note, nurses are entreated to expand their range of practice as well as to master scientific instruments along with data management structures at the same time as harmonizing care athwart players of health experts. Nevertheless, as nursing education remains mandated with the task of preparing nurses to come in a labor force, which is multifaceted, hesitant, and continually evolving (Spector & Odom, 2012). There is recognition that a significant future’s objective is to support academic development alternatives for every nurse. Therefore, this aspect calls for the promotion of theoretical development in nursing in agreement with the IOM report as well as with its extreme caring values, honesty, multiplicity, and excellence. The IOM distinguishes that the variety presented by manifold admission into the nursing line of work and the diversity of development alternatives obtainable offer a setting for fortification and expert growth. On the other hand, inventive educational plans are fundamental to provide occasions for all-time learning as well as academic development. To organize a more intellectual and varied labor force, nurse educators, as well as clinical practice stakeholders, are required to collaborate to build new academic progression models, which move nurse graduates to higher degrees more professionally and with less fee (Frenk et al., 2010).

Application of Implementation of Information from Clinical Project to Improve Professional Nursing Practice and Complex Client Care

Among the IOM key messages of Future of Nursing, the account is that nurses are supposed to attain higher heights of training and education via an enhanced education system, which upholds faultless academic development.  However, linked to proposals set objectives to raise the percentage of states nurses having a bachelor’s degree from 50-80%; and to increase the number of doctorate nurses by 2020 (Hackbarth & Boccuti, 2011).

However, these goals reprimand numerous barriers, which at present hinder the aptitude to meet rising demand for an improved well-informed nursing labor force. Among them is an unsatisfactory aptitude to plan sufficient numbers of nurses at admission and higher heights of education. In spite of compelling evidence, which bonds BSN education with the inferior patient mortality rate, medical mistakes, and improved patient outcomes, about 60% of novel nurse graduates are at present educated for degree programs. Also, research points out that nurses who firstly graduated from associate degree courses are much unlikely as compared to graduates in nursing with bachelor’s degree courses to always pursue as well as acquire a higher or master’s degree (Steglitz, Buscemi & Ferguson, 2012).

This remains significant for many reasons. Firstly, nurses’ demands are rising; this is on account of a progressively more complex healthcare delivery structure along with the nursing needs to be full associates and deal with care along a range as associates of interdisciplinary players. This will need nurses to gain a superior education, which promotes a deeper consideration of the numerous aspects that impact on patient’s illness and health. Ideally, a nursing bachelor’s degree prepares nurses better to handle those problems. Secondly, with fewer nurses getting advanced education, the endeavors to generate sufficient nursing faculty numbers or advanced practice nurses to meet prospective demands in provider and educational fields (mainly primary healthcare) remains seriously hindered. Thirdly, over the next generation, over 50 percent of present nursing faculty remains predictable to retire, together with as many as 0.5 million skilled nurses as of the clinical personnel (Dzau et al., 2010).

Overall, these details reprimand numerous transformations, which need to take place in the instant future to prepare adequate number of registered nurses at admission as well as higher heights in the labor force. To start with, nursing education structures have to develop so that the aim of attaining a much bigger BSN proportion of nurse graduates are capable of being realized. However, beyond communication agreements in which, so far, have been restricted to their efficiency, one plan posed for attaining this goal remains for the entire pre-licensure programs for nurses to be allowed to award bachelor’s degrees. Nevertheless, lessening the gap flanked by clinical as well as academic pays are as well essential to generate encouragements for nurses to be enrolled in advanced education so as to meet the criteria for faculty spots. Second, employers have to place superior stress on the achievement of advanced education heights by nurses via employment practices, and by facilitating educational progression opportunities. As a final point, it remains seriously imperative, which nurses with no BSN make the most of the opportunities to take advanced education to turn out to be well prepared to take care of patients in a progressively more multifaceted healthcare delivery structure.

Evaluation and Outcomes

There is a possibility that education has a noteworthy effect on the competencies as well as knowledge of nurses, as it is for the entire healthcare providers. Nurses with BSN degrees remain well-prepared to tackle the needs sited on nowadays’ nurse. Ideally, BSN nurses are valued for their abilities in leadership, critical-thinking, case management, as well as health promotion. Furthermore, they are known to be competent for their capability to perform across a range of outpatient and inpatient backgrounds (Balmer, 2013).

Summary

In summary, the changes projected by healthcare transformation have the prospective to change considerably the setting that nurses along with other healthcare experts will practice. However, the increasing stress on primary healthcare, transition healthcare, as well as accountable healthcare organizations underlines a basic change in the way the U.S. healthcare delivery structure is foreseen to task in the future. Therefore, this future healthcare setting remains very diverse that many people in academia at present prepare medical scholars to practice in, for instance, a setting that has been preponderantly concentrated on the preparation of learners for practice in acute care environment. The IOM’s nursing future concerning leading change, advancing health in 2011 without a doubt identifies transformation, which needs to take place in nursing education in case we anticipate training nurses with the skills and competencies needed to practice in a redefined healthcare system.

References

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