NR 506 Week 8 Discussion, Global Policy Reform

Week 8: Reflection: Global Policy Reform This class provided me the opportunity to expand and deepen my knowledge about healthcare systems, politics, and health policy. For instance, I learned so much on the area of policy making and the importance of being the advocate for the public. This course made me feel that I can do things such as creating a change that will positively help the public. As a professional nurse, I am blessed to be able to lend a hand that will serves as the power to create a positive change in my community. This class provided me a solid foundation of health care policies and understanding law in healthcare system. This class expanded my knowledge on the America’s historical development of health care. The development of health care in America is slowly improving. I also learned in this class that the delivery of health care in America has quiet significant differences based on the populations socioeconomic. For instance, if you are poor, the access to health care services is very difficult, but if you have money and health insurance, it is not difficult to access medical treatment. However, there are health insurances that will not cover some medical treatment and have their own selections of covered medical providers based on their insurance policy. In this class we explore different health policy issues that our health care system currently facing today such uncontrolled Drug pricing and opioids. The effects of this issues in our health care system is very significant especially to the American people and in our government. Lastly, this class provided us the opportunity to identify specific policy issue and present it to the selected official and instructor in writing, and at the last week of this course we were instructed to create a summary of identified issue and proposed solution to the selected elected official. The article that was asked to be reviewed regarding the economic burden of physical inactivity: A global analysis of major non-communicable diseases (Lawson et al., 2016) opened my mind how physical inactivity can truly a factor for some diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and a how it largely affects health care cost in the US and abroad. As nurses, we know that we need to bed resourceful and use current evidence-based nursing actions to make an informed decision on nursing practice and patient outcomes on a global basis. This will be achieved by CE’s, being part of a research team as well as joining available conferences as well as participating in a global research and projects. Doing this, it will empower the morale of the nurse who engages in this activity which will positively impact the healthcare delivery for the patient locally and or globally. The knowledge I learned from this course will be useful in my advance practicum by ensuring the use of up to date healthcare policies and be the voice for my patients and the public all the time. Over all, this class provided me the necessary information and knowledge that I can use as a guide in my daily nursing practice and in my future advance nursing practice career. Regards, Restituto References Ding, D. Lawson, K. D. Kolbe-Alexander, T. L., Finkelstein, E. A., Katzmarzyk, P. T., van Mechelen, W. & Pratt, M. (2016). The economic burden of physical inactivity: A global analysis of major non-communicable diseases. The Lancet, 388(10051), . doi: 10.1016/S(16)30383-X Instructor Response Hi Tuto - it sounds like you found the course to be helpful for you personally and professionally. For most, health policy and advocacy is hard to do because we are so patient centered. All of you are not beginning to think outside of the box!! Hello Dr MJ, Thank you so much for taking the time responding to my discussion this week. Also, I would like to say thank you for sharing your knowledge and for a fun eight weeks class. The knowledge i acquired from the content presented weekly, from you and from the rest of the class is very important to me and my professional growth. I agree, as nurses we are very patient centered, I think that because of this it will be a challenge for someone to be patient advocate or develop and new healthcare policy. Although, I think that it will be an area that every nurse should look into and develop a mechanism or system to be used in managing advocacy, patient centered concept and health policy making at the same time. Patient advocacy is very important in our profession and so is health care policy. It is largely used daily such as in the clinical area by nurses and other healthcare team member. This class helped me widen my knowledge in the area of healthcare policy and the importance of patient advocacy.