photo: workforce.southcentral.nhs.uk
San Francisco, CA (NursingSalary.org)- Recently, the IOM had released a statement issuing their opinion on what needs to happen in the health care industry. What they think should happen is expanding the responsibility of what nurse’s do and their workload. What they mean by this is instead of being limited by their work, they will be able to do a lot more along the lines of what an actual doctor is able to do. Right now, most nurses are being held back by regulations from the government on what they can and cannot do depending on what state they practice in. Obviously, this is the only rule that matters right now, but this can definitely change in the future if they think it will help.
Since a doctor can only be one place at once, it would trim down his workload. This would make it so patients could get in and out quicker, and more patients would be able to get in each day. This would come in handy over the next decade due to the health care reform bill. Think about it. There will be a lot more people at the doctor’s office each day that did not originally go because they could not afford the bill. Now that going to the doctor will be free, the office is sure to be flooded. That will make the doctor’s job even tougher to jump from one room to the next. With nurses being limited to such little work, time is being wasted, and there is nothing they can do about it because of the government regulations.
There was a report released that there are over 3 million nurses in the United States and over 250,000 of them are advanced practice registered nurses. What this means is that they have either masters or doctoral degrees and have passed national certification exams. Why would you limit such talented nurse’s from doing more work that they are capable of doing? It seems like a major waste of talent if you are only going to have someone do such little work when they are qualified to do so much more. This would be a great move if they would loosen up the state regulations on what nurse’s can do. The qualified ones should be able to do much more than what they currently do.
