In the post, the classmate discusses the issue of the nursing population getting older, which results in staff shortages and as an implication, the reduced quality of healthcare being provided to patients. Like the population that nurses serve, the healthcare workforce is also getting older. According to Haddad, Annamaraju, and Toneu-Butler (2020), there are currently around a million nurses who are older than fifty years, which suggests that in the next ten to fifteen years, one-third of the workforce could reach retirement age. Such a challenge needs addressing because of the unique problems that come with it, such as having to train more new nurses despite the availability of fewer resources because the nursing faculty is also getting older.
Together with aging, the nursing population is also limited in their efforts to provide quality care because of burnout in the workplace. Getting burned out on the job is a problem because it leads to the increased rates of turnover, depending on the geographic location and nursing specialty. The lack of nursing professionals available to treat patients is especially relevant in the current climate when the COVID-19 pandemic requires extensive care and rapid decision-making from professionals (Sperling, 2020). Thus, there is a need to establish effective and comprehensive programs to aid the healthcare sphere to train and hire as many nurses as possible in the nearest future. The plans need to create favorable environments in which nurses can feel supported and inspired to provide care to the population. Incentives are a good idea because they can be applied both to new nurses and the ones who are already in the workforce.
The peer post is about the quality of healthcare services provided in the United States, with the emphasis placed on the financial aspects as well as the part played by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The main challenge with the US healthcare system is that the government has spent almost twice as much on healthcare as other countries with a high income while the population health outcomes were poorer. The increased expenses such as physicians’ and nurses’ salaries, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and administration are all necessary for care provision. However, despite the costly utilization of care services, the quality of care does not meet the standards that have been established in other countries with high spending on care delivery (Feldscher, 2018).
The ACA is highly important within the described setting because the program has been established to cut the costs of US healthcare. It works through increasing the coverage of insurance and making investments in programs intended for reducing the costs while improving healthcare quality. The ACA is associated with expanded healthcare coverage, with more and more Americans gaining health insurance coverage with the help of the. Importantly, citizens with pre-existing health conditions cannot be denied coverage. In addition, the ACA is important because it also considers such areas as disease prevention and wellness, which are essential for providing a high quality of care (Cropper, 2020). Therefore, the ACA is the current answer to the issues of increased spending on care and poor quality. However, significant efforts are still needed to help the US health industry reach the desired standards of care quality as well as patient outcomes in the long run.
References
Cropper, D. (2020). The importance of the Affordable Care Act.
Feldscher, K. (2018). What’s behind high U.S. health care costs.
Haddad, L., Annamaraju, P., & Toney-Butler, T. (2020). Nursing shortage.
Sperling, D. (2020). Ethical dilemmas, perceived risk, and motivation among nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nursing Ethics, 28(1), 9-22.