Health Care Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Health Care Policy - Essay Example Strategies focused on working conditions and retention should occupy a central position in any nursing workforce revitalization plan"(Sochalski J, 2005). In connection to this, different national professional nursing organizations have chosen to play an active role in assisting legislators with not only insights but overview of this issue. The main focus of most organizations now is to increase the supply of nurses in different health institutions and act as bargaining arm in behalf of the nurses' concern. Some organizations would rather focus on long term solutions such as increasing the number of students enrolled in nursing courses, giving incentives, salary increase to existing nurses to give them more reasons to stay. Whereas, other legislators would opt for more short term solutions such as opening more opportunities for nursing to foreign workers. Needless to say, the demand for more nursing professionals compels not only the health care industry, but also the government to act fast in this continuous problem. In this writer's opinion, high tech facilities, modern equipments can only be as good as top of the line services prov ided by hospitals. Without the latter, nothing much can be expected. Looking at the abundance of legislative ... Increasing supply via education- scholarships, forgivable loans in return of service to underserved areas; funding for increased school capacity and faculty; incentives such as scholarships, tutoring, transportation and child care to attract minority students. Such policy can be well directed to education institutions, or colleges that only offer nursing courses. And probably, the government may also look at trying to recruit more males in this industry to balance out the depreciation of nurses leaving because of pregnancy, child rearing duties. Increasing supply via immigration- Expand the H1-C category for visas, which aims to bring foreign-trained and licensed nurses t the United States to provide service to underserved areas. This is a very good strategy considering that migrant workers will come to the US as full time nurses and will have their full attention to their jobs. Given that they are away from their families, they will have more focus on what they are ought to do. The government however, must make sure that qualifying exams are really at par with the quality standards of our healthcare industry. Data and Planning- establish commissions, studies, task forces and committees to analyze or monitor the nursing workforce, expand duties of nursing licensure boards to collect, monitor and utilize nursing workforce data. Probably this is the same with organizing our very own think tank, or an organization that focuses on research communications to be the main source of data related to this field. Work Environment- limit overtime, impose mandatory overtime, post staffing ratios in hospitals to inform the public, define associated disciplinary actions. Licensure Compacts- interstate recognition of nursing licenses; promote mobility.