Adapting to Change: Challenges for Healthcare Providers - Research Paper

Introduction

The healthcare field is a very dynamic one and is actively experiencing changes to meet client demands. Hospitals are frequently required to update their practices due to the novel medical techniques that are developed continuously. Healthcare concerns direct interaction between patients and the medical staff. Currently, healthcare providers are facing challenges in dealing with new complex diseases and using the complicated technologies that are invented for treatment purposes. The graduate nurses in particular face bigger challenges in implementing the knowledge and skills learned in class in the hospital setting. Graduate nurse finds that there is a gap between their curriculum and what is applicable in the real world. This paper is going to discuss the roles of new graduate nurses, the challenges that they face, the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that nursing leaders desire in new nurses and those that new nurses lack and the methods of assisting graduate nurses to transition swiftly to practice.

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Roles of Graduate Nurses

According to research, nurses are playing roles in hospitals today in coordinating care from many providers, taking care of caseloads of clients with intense care requirements and assisting patients transition from healthcare settings to their homes or other environments. Graduate nurses are required to act as health instructors in promoting healthiness and preventing diseases. The other roles of graduate nurses include: performing nursing activities that are validated in the nursing graduate duties; providing both direct and indirect nursing care to patients; coordinating with their management to manage nursing activities; evaluating patients conditions and statuses; compassionately delivering patient care; administering medications to patients; managing and handling clinical conditions in the hospital; taking part in care delivery meetings; and performing diagnostic investigations on patients and documenting them (Singh et al., 2019).

Challenges Faced by New Graduate Nurses

Fresh graduate nurses face numerous challenges while transitioning to the workforce. The challenges include an increase in the number of patients with complicated conditions and many comorbidities, inaccessibility to experienced mentors and instructors, variety in generations in the workforce, performance nervosity, as well as bullying. The challenges occur simultaneously, making nurses look fatigued and stressed during the transition (Wong et al., 2018). Nurses are required to manage patients and associations with other providers and patients' relatives as well as spearhead the interprofessional team. When not guided through properly and caringly, new graduate nurses dealing with complex patient conditions might feel overwhelmed and become nervous, which may cause attrition. Healthcare providers currently encounter patients with complicated chronic illnesses such as cancers, diabetes, obesity, heart diseases and renal diseases (Hofler and Thomas, 2016). The complex conditions may be attributed to inaccessibility to primary care, limited funding for care, scarce access to preventive care, as well as socioeconomic and cultural factors. Patients who are not insured or who have limited insurance often take too long to seek medical attention, until their cases need acute care.

The healthcare settings are currently experiencing nurses leave because of retirement, high workloads, increased ambulatory chances or reduced resources. The hospitals are therefore unable to exploit the experienced staff as mentors to the fresh graduates. Instructors are essential for transitioning for the Millenials. The hospitals should also consider generational variety when structuring the mentor-mentee association. Lack of a structure regarding generational diversity causes a turnover.

Bullying fresh graduate nurses is a pervading issue that impedes socialization. Most of the time nurses bully the new entrants to keep control of the work setting. Another challenge that fresh graduates face is the theory-to-practice gap. According to research, students report that the knowledge and skills they acquire in school are important but not enough for them to handle such issues as emergency response and handover cases (Hofler and Thomas, 2016). They lack the advanced skills and experience of handling critical patient cases. New graduate nurses also report challenges to do with communication. They do not know the best way to communicate with the patients and their families since they expect much than the nurses can offer, which results in conflicts. The nurses are also challenged when communicating to physicians since they do not understand what details of the patient to present to the physician, and when to call the physician when the patient conditions deteriorate.

Skills, Knowledge, and Attitudes Nursing Leaders Desire in New Graduate Nurses

Before recruitment, their various skills, knowledge, and attitudes that nursing leaders desire in new graduate nurses. Nursing leaders require that new nurses have strong leadership skills to take part in patient safety and quality of care. Leadership skills are accompanied by stern decision-making skills in order to act fast in the event that the patient's condition worsens. Nurses should be good decision-makers to decide what particular activity to do at every stage of patient care to enhance the quality of care and patient safety (Haddad et al., 2018). The nurses are also expected to be great critical thinkers in order to deduce which medication works well in a certain critical condition. Additionally, nursing leaders desire fresh graduate nurses who have excellent teamwork and collaboration skills between the different disciplines. Patient care is a task that involves more than one party and therefore teamwork between the nurse, the patients, and their families and physicians are essential for quality care (Kilicli et al., 2019). Good teamwork skills require that the nurse has good interpersonal and communication skills. The nursing profession requires a person who can build good relationships with the patients, relatives, and physicians to bolter smooth operation inpatient care. Other attributes that nursing leaders want in fresh nurses include knowledge of ethical issues of patient care, accountability, documentation, time management, shift work and organizational skills (Haddad et al., 2018). The nurses are also required to have high self-efficacy, as well as the can-do and dedication attitudes. Many nursing leaders report that majority of the fresh graduate nurses have poor communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and documentation skills. The new nurses also lack confidence in disseminating duties independently and their attitudes towards the practice are poor.

Strategies to Assist New Nurses in Transitioning

The new graduate nurses have demonstrated that they require some intervention to transition to practice and narrow the gap of shortage of nurses. Some of the strategies include preceptor programs and mentoring. Preceptor programs support the new nurses transition swiftly by cutting off culture shock and also helping in linking theory to practice, thus reducing the theory-to-practice gap (Regan et al., 2017). The programs enable the graduate nurse to work closely with a seasoned nurse, thus boosting their confidence, competency and obtain more independence in inpatient care. Other strategies to assist nurses in transitioning include: engaging in self-care, where nurse should get sufficient rest, diet as well as exercise; utilizing critical conversations to advocate for oneself; using good verbal and written, and non-verbal communication skills to avoid misunderstandings; effectively advocating for self and patients to address issues such as bullying, workloads and workplace environment; improving time management and organizational skills to ensure that everything is done timely and in an orderly manner; and establishing goals and objectives to monitor progress (Regan et al., 2017). The organization can also help the new graduate nurses by providing a supportive environment to enable them to get clinical and patient management skills thus impacting their overall development, as well as a program that ensures continued staff development. Other interventions may include correct guidance by seasoned nurses, timely feedback, orienting the nurse with reasonable goals, leaders being responsive and approachable as well as enough staffing patterns.

References

Hofler, L., & Thomas, K. (2016). Transition of new graduate nurses to the workforce challenges and solutions in the changing health care environment. North Carolina medical journal, 77(2), 133-136. http://www.ncmedicaljournal.com/content/77/2/133.full

Haddad, M., Pinfold, V., Ford, T., Walsh, B., & Tylee, A., 2018. The effect of a training programme on school nurses' knowledge, attitudes, and depression recognition skills: The QUEST cluster randomised controlled trial. International journal of nursing studies, 83, 1-10. https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxylocal.library.nova.edu/science/article/pii/S0020748918300816

Kilicli, A. B., Kelber, S. T., Akyar, I., & Litwack, K. (2019). Attitude, source of knowledge, and supporting factors on evidencebased nursing among cardiovascular nurses: A crosssectional descriptive study in Turkey. Journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 25(3), 498-506.

Rn, N. H., 2019. Coming ready or not! An integrative review examining new graduate nurses' transition in acute care. International Journal of Nursing Practice. Volume 25, Issue 3. https://doi-org.ezproxylocal.library.nova.edu/10.1111/ijn.12714

Regan, S., Wong, C., Laschinger, H. K., Cummings, G., Leiter, M., MacPhee, M., ... & YoungRitchie, C., 2017. Starting Out: qualitative perspectives of new graduate nurses and nurse leaders on transition to practice. Journal of Nursing Management, 25(4), 246-255.

Singh, C., Cross, W., Munro, I., & Jackson, D. (2019). Occupational stress facing Nurse AcademicsA mixedmethods systematic review. Journal of Clinical Nursing.

Wong, S. W. J., Che, W. S. W., Cheng, M. T. C., Cheung, C. K., Cheung, T. Y. J., Lee, K. Y., ... & Yip, S. L. (2018). Challenges of fresh nursing graduates during their transition period. J Nurs Educ Pract, 8(6), 30.