NR 506 – Week 2 Replies
Please answer the two following posts as I’m reply to each one. Each post must have 150 words. In case of using data must provide reference using within 5 years.
1) Reply to Peer – Jean Latouche
Dr. Adams and class,
My selected topic is about childhood obesity. My topic will focus on increasing exercise programs in school to encourage good habits at home. My motive for choosing this topic is because my specialty is in pediatrics and I would like to continue to impact the health of the patients in my community positively. Overweight and obesity can influence children both physically and mentally (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2018). Children and adolescents who exercise consistently will lead healthier lives and decrease their chances of developing chronic health conditions ( CDC, 2018). Addressing childhood obesity will reduce the number of chronic health condition such as Diabetes and other cardiac diseases. Childhood obesity has become an American epidemic (Sahoo, Sahoo, Choudhury, Sofi, Kumar & Bhadoria, 2015). Childhood obesity is such a big issue in today’s society due to unhealthy eating habits, lack of physical activity and stress to name a few ( Sahoo et al., 2015). Obesity is when children have an overabundance of body fat, and their BMI is in the 95th percentile or more ( Sahoo et al., 2015). The number of children today who are considered overweight or obese is at least 32% (Sahoo et al., 2015). According to a study by the Robert Wood Johnson foundation children between the ages of 10 and 17 are obese in South Florida (RWJF, 2018). The model of policy-making that would be best applied for childhood obesity is Longest’s Policy Cycle Model. The model for policy-making consists of three phases such as formulation, implementation, and policy modification (Mason, Gardner, Outlaw & O’Grady, 2016). Each phase comprises of a plan and an event that produce a result that can impact the next stage. The reason I chose his model is that I think this phase gives nurses more opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge and skills to improve patient outcome.
2) Reply to Instructor – Dr. Adams
Bellow was my post and following is the Instructor question that needs to be answered.
Hi Dr. Adams and Classmates,
The shortage of primary care physicians can cause a lot of negative effects on the overall healthcare industry. But more specifically, this shortage threatens patient’s access to quality care, therefore, affecting their chances of having a positive outcome. At the moment, statistics indicate that for every 2,000 patients, there is only a single physician. This means approximately 13% of patients in the United States of America are at risk due to lack of adequate medical attention (Flinter, Hsu, Cromp, Ladden & Wagner, 2017).
I chose this topic simply because, despite the number of doctors produced by the system, the fact that there are not enough to serve the entire population is alarming. Additionally, the fact that there are numerous medical schools in the United States, this means they should be able to produce enough physicians to take care of the ever growing population.
It is, therefore, evident that there is a need for new structures, frameworks, and policies that have to be developed and implemented in order to address this problem. Therefore, I believe introducing policies that completely overhaul the traditional way of doing things will enable the system to develop towards addressing the physician shortage issue. The government has made public its ambition of creating universal healthcare, therefore, the only way to address the gap is by altering the routine that led to this problem in the first place. Specifically, addressing this issue will require general re-engineering of the entire healthcare system so that it can focus on preventive care (Bodenheimer, & Bauer, 2016). When the community is given information by community health workers, it tends to live positively thus maintenance of health, which would also mean fewer patients for the limited number of physicians to treat. Training of mid-level healthcare providers would foster the success of this policy because over reliance on physicians would reduce because some of their roles and functions will be divided among other relevant clinicians.
References
Bodenheimer, T., & Bauer, L. (2016). Rethinking the primary care workforce—an expanded role for nurses. New England Journal of Medicine, 375(11), 1015-1017.
Flinter, M., Hsu, C., Cromp, D., Ladden, M. D., & Wagner, E. H. (2017). Registered nurses in primary care: Emerging new roles and contributions to team-based care in high-performing practices. The Journal of ambulatory care management, 40(4), 287.
Question
Kamila, I understand the problem you mention but what can a legislator do about it? Are you looking to increase nurse practitioners to fill the gap?
Please clarify your focus.
Thanks,