Global Health Nursing Challenges Of The 21st Century †Free Samples

Question: Discuss about the Global Health Nursing Challenges Of The 21st Century. Answer: The global nursing workforces are going to face several challenges in the delivery of care in the 21century due to the complexities in health care demands. The main factor contributing to such complexities includes the issue of ageing population, prevalence of chronic disease, climate change and urbanization of the society. In such situation, they will require higher level of skills, competencies and attitudes to provide care in a safe and efficient manner (Gimenes Faleiros, 2014). This essay discusses about the global health nursing challenges in the 21st century and the factors contributing to challenges for the nurse. It also provides a detailed discussion on possible solution to address one of the challenges. The position the essay is taking is that nurse needs to upgrade their skills to overcome and confront the nursing challenges in the 21st century particularly the issue related to ageing population, prevalence of chronic disease, climate change and urbanization of society. There are numerous challenges and contributing factors behind rise in nursing challenges today. The rise in the ageing population is regarded as one of the most significant global nursing challenges. Advancements in health care services and the globalization process are the factors that have increased life expectancy of people and contributed to the rise in ageing population. The increase in people aged above 60 years of age will mean increases in health care demand and greater burden of the nurse in dealing with age-related disabilities and frailty. Hence, adapting to critical care demands of elderly people and dealing with multiple ailments will be a challenge for global nursing staff (Carlson Idva, 2015). The factors that increases such challenge is the rise in ageing nurse workforce too, poor attitude of current generation to join the elderly nursing service and lack of training in critical care for elderly people. A study on the attitude of nurses towards older clients has show ed that newly placed nursing students often have poor attitudes towards elderly people compared to more experienced nurse (Giardina-Roche Black, 2016). Hence, changes in attitude, skills and knowledge are necessary for 21st century nurse to efficiently provide care to ageing populations. Another widely recognized global nursing challenge in the current century is the prevalence and the high incidence of non-communicable disease (NCDs) worldwide. Chronic disease particularly NCDs are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. The World Health Organization (2015) report mentions that in 2015, about 56 million deaths occurred worldwide and 70% of these deaths were caused by NCDSs like cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and lung disease. As this trend is a threat to the health of populations specially in low and middle income countries, the global nursing workforce faces a challenge in integrating evidence based prevention and treatment programs into primary care system. This challenge is further compounded by factors like shortage of nursing workforce, lack of skills in the management of NCDs and inefficiency in translating evidence into practice (Hersch, 2015). Hence, the nursing workforce needs to evolve to overcome the primary health care crisis (S molowitz et al., 2015). Apart from ageing population and prevalence of chronic disease, climate change, urbanization, disparities in health care access and food security related issues will be a major hurdle for nurses to overcome in the coming years. Climate and environmental issues increases the challenges nurses face because this issue affects other systems like urbanization, health care access and food security. Climate change is strongly linked to human health as extreme weather events like natural disasters affects the availability of food and water, settlement patterns of people and transmission of vector borne diseases. Vulnerable populations such as children, elderly people, people living in poverty are most likely to be affected by climate changes as they lack resilience and appropriate resources to maintain health and well-being. Hence, for nurses joining the nursing workforce in the coming years, coping with climate change will be challenging. This is mainly due to the impact of climate change o n various other aspects of human life. Therefore, the issue of climate change needs to be critically analysed to determine possible solutions that can prepare the global nursing workforce to effectively handle health issues arising due to climate change. Climate change will have a devastating impact on vulnerable groups that were identified above. Hence, for an adequate nursing workforce of the future, action need to be taken to protect vulnerable groups from the harmful consequence of extreme weather events. The nurses must be made aware of the effects climate change on human health and develop the skills needed to mitigate health risks in affected population (AnAaker et al., 2015). The nursing workforce can be encouraged to play a role in sustainable development by empowering groups, communities and individual to create a healthy society (Breakey et al., 2015). They should also be involved in health promotion activities by teaching about behaviours to positively influence environment and be sustainable. Such kind of strategies to spread nurses awareness about their responsible towards and climate and environmental issues can pave for transforming the health care sector from unsustainable development to sustainable development. Incl usion of the topic of sustainability in nursing education can also help global nursing workforce to be prepared for future challenges in practice (AnAaker et al., 2015). Due to changes in climate, future nursing workforce will need to handle large number of disaster cases. Hence, they can also engage in disaster preparedness by to minimise challenges in health delivery in the 21st century. For this, they need to engage in professional development programme in the area of epidemiology, disaster response and competencies for disaster response. This knowledge can support them in effectively responding to public health epidemics, environmental hazards and protecting vulnerable people from health risk (Rokkas, Cornell Steenkamp, 2014). In conclusion, challenges for nurse in the 21st century increased due to population ageing, prevalence of NCDs, climate change, food insecurities and health risk in vulnerable population. In response to each challenge, there are many hurdles for nurses in providing care and includes responding to critical demands of elderly people, coping with health consequences of climate change and high work burden due to the prevalence of chronic diseases. All these factors contribute to greater health burden for nurses. However, there are many strategies to manage all forms o challenges too. From the analysis of global nursing challenges and steps needed to improve the situation, it can be restated that for nurses, upgrading their clinical skills as per practice situation is essential to retain their job position. References: AnAaker, A., Nilsson, M., Holmner, A., Elf, M. (2015). Nurses perceptions of climate and environmental issues: a qualitative study.Journal of advanced nursing,71(8), 1883-1891, DOI:10.1111/jan.12655 Breakey, S., Corless, I. B., Meedzan, N., Nicholas, P. K., ProQuest Ebooks. (2015). Global health nursing in the 21st century (1st ed.). New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company. Carlson, E., Idvall, E. (2015). Who wants to work with older people? Swedish student nurses' willingness to work in elderly careA questionnaire study.Nurse education today,35(7), 849-853, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2015.03.002 Giardina-Roche, C., Black, M. E. (2016). Attitudes of diploma student nurses toward adult clients.Journal of Nursing Education,29(5), 208-214, https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-19900501-08 Gimenes, F. R. E., Faleiros, F. (2014). Nursing Challenges for the 21st Century.J Nurs Care,3(143), 2167-1168, doi:10.4172/2167-1168.1000143 Hersch, F. 2015. Meeting the health care challenges of the 21st Century.George Institute for Global Health, Oxford University, 103-118, Available at: https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Skoll_Centre/Docs/essay-hersch.pdf Rokkas, P., Cornell, V., Steenkamp, M. (2014). Disaster preparedness and response: challenges for Australian public health nursesa literature review.Nursing health sciences,16(1), 60-66, DOI:10.1111/nhs.12134 Smolowitz, J., Speakman, E., Wojnar, D., Whelan, E. M., Ulrich, S., Hayes, C., Wood, L. (2015). Role of the registered nurse in primary health care: meeting health care needs in the 21st century.Nursing Outlook,63(2), 130-136, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2014.08.004 World Health Organization. (2015). NCD mortality and morbidity. Retrieved 6 March 2018, from https://www.who.int/gho/ncd/mortality_morbidity/en