Introduction
The issue of access to healthcare has gained particular urgency and importance over the past decade. Due to the emergence of several major health threats, particularly, the coronavirus pandemic, and the persistence of some of the prevalent public health issues, such as diabetes, an increasingly greater number of people need constant and uninhibited access to healthcare (Hellman et al., 2018). However, due to the presence of economic, financial, and cultural barriers, a substantial part of the population is incapable of receiving healthcare of the necessary quality (Hellman et al., 2018). The described disparity appears to be quite natural, yet it cannot possibly be justified since any citizen must be entitled to appropriate healthcare services (Hellman et al., 2018). Therefore, strategies for enhancing the quality of care for patients form impoverished and disadvantaged communities must be sought. Specifically, the current approach to health management within healthcare facilities must be geared toward patient education and the promotion of equal treatment of patients among nurses.
Management Strategies for Maintaining the Quality of Care
Patient Education
Since a significant range of high-quality services is likely to be unavailable to patients from underserviced backgrounds and people who are struggling with maintaining their financial well-being, it is vital to place the focus on patient education and promotion of health literacy as one of the goals in healthcare management. Specifically, healthcare managers must ensure that nurse educators are provided with sufficient resources and support for reaching out to the members of impoverished and disadvantaged communities, promoting healthy lifestyles and explaining the importance of disease prevention.
Additionally, the available healthcare resources must be allocated in the way that could allow for a program involving free consultations and screening options. The specified aspect of healthcare management will demand revisiting the current budgeting framework and rearranging the existing resources. Specifically, digital tools for expanding healthcare services to reach out to patients form impoverished and disadvantaged areas will be required. More importantly, the opportunities in question must be made well-known and easily accessible by the target demographic. To ensure that the programs offering free-of-charge screening and healthcare support to vulnerable populations meet their objectives, nurses will need o introduce effective communication strategies for disseminating the relevant information among the members of the target population. Apart form the word of the mouth, which is especially helpful in spreading the information about the newly accessible healthcare services, the target audience will have to be made aware of the new health management opportunities with the help of social media and the relevant tools.
From the healthcare management standpoint, the specified concern will need to be addressed as an information management issue. Namely, the available tools for enhancing the patient-nurse communication channel will have to be utilized. Specifically, the use of surveys and the introduction of both print and digital booklets for raising awareness among patients from disadvantaged communities will be required to ensure that the specified demographic receives the necessary amount of support. Furthermore, enhanced tools for a direct nurse-patient conversation will have to be incorporated into the framework. For this purpose, the guidelines provided by the HIPPA will h need to be followed especially closely. Namely, the frameworks such as SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) and the BATHE (Background, Affect, Troubles, Handling, Empathetic Statement) will have to eb utilized to ensure that a strong rapport is built with the patient (Hellman et al., 2018).
Nurse Education
Finally, one must mention the issue of nurse education as a vital aspect of healthcare management in the context in question. Namely, in order to meet the needs of patients from disadvantaged communities, nurse will need to introduce specific tools for addressing the presence of health-related myths exacerbating the target audiences’ conditions. Therefore, a culture-specific approach will be needed to target the key demographic. For this reason, additional efforts must be made to promote cultural competence in nurses an ensure that they approach the specified patients in the manner that will allow for productive dialogue. Namely, understanding the nature of misconceptions leading to the development of health-related myths will be required.
The described education process will also require focusing on building proper and continuous communication with patients. By utilizing nurse-patient communication as the basis for patient education and the active provision of counseling, one will be able to address the problem of healthcare disparities in the target setting. Specifically, nurses will need to examine the key structures that entail the emergence of the described issues and disparities in healthcare. The outlined goal can be attained by introducing poverty simulators with the help of which nurses will recognize the range of issues faced by people from impoverished backgrounds when trying to access healthcare services, According to Hellman et al. (2018, p. 12), the specified stage is crucial in building empathy and the basis for cross-cultural communication in healthcare experts: “The purpose of a poverty simulation is to encourage students to reflect on the misconceptions, biases, and judgments regarding people who live in poverty and experience some of the pressures that they face within a safe environment.” Simulations are bound to provide nurses with a significantly accurate representation of the challenges that they are likely to face when tending to the needs of impoverished patients. Therefore, the specified approaches to nurse education must be used to familiarize experts with the factors that prevent patients from disadvantaged communities form accessing the necessary healthcare services.
Moreover, nurses will have to embrace the socioeconomic factors shaping the target audience’s health status an defining their inability to access the relevant services. In order to embrace the full extent of factors shaping patients’ ability to access the required healthcare services, the theory of the social determinants of health (SDoH) will be utilized. The specified framework will assist in identifying the key obstacles apart form financial constraints that prevent the target demographic form seeking the necessary healthcare support. Specifically, apart from the obvious issue of poverty, which implies inability to purchase the required medication and use high-quality healthcare, poverty implies low education rates, which lead to the further dissemination of health-related myths, and the absence of employment options, which means the absence of an effective and functioning healthcare insurance (Hellman et al., 2018). Therefore, the specified concerns are also to be taken into account when managing the available healthcare resources.
Conclusion
By focusing on patient and nurse education, healthcare managers will be able to support patients from impoverished and disadvantaged backgrounds. Despite the lack of resources, the target population can be provided with the necessary services once communication between patients and nurses is enhanced. Thus, by offering vu8lnerable groups information for building their awareness and health literacy, as well as instructing nurses on communication with the specified group and managing its members needs, one will be able to increase the quality of care.
Reference
Hellman, A. N., Cass, C., Cathey, H., Smith, S. L., & Hurley, S. (2018). Understanding poverty: teaching social justice in undergraduate nursing education. Journal of Forensic Nursing, 14(1), 11-17. Web.