GLOBAL HEALTH ISSUES
The course has been very resourceful in educating about global health and giving insights to what global healthcare is really. For instance, learning about Millennium Development Goals enabled me to learn about the United Nations’ goals that aim at combating health challenges including maternal and neonatal mortality, and issues related to health including poverty and nutrition. However, the area that was important to my career as a nurse was that of health disparities and vulnerable groups in global health. The aspect of variability in accessibility and affordability in health care is crucial because as nurses, we should strive to ensure equity in health regardless of ones’ economic, social, ethnic, or cultural background (Papastavrou et al. 2012). The nurses’ code of ethics, which is the American Nurses Association and International Council of Nurses require that nurses should have respect for inherent dignity, value and individual uniqueness should not hinder them from receiving nursing care
Currently, what I think is slightly different from what I thought of before because as nurses, we have a considerable influence in ensuring equity in healthcare. Earlier on, my opinion was that the government of various states should look into issues and sort them out. However, as the course is coming close to the end, I have learnt that nurses have a significant influence on the quality of healthcare and patient safety through implementing policies and advocating for vulnerable people.
I have learnt a lot in this course, including the importance of transparency in healthcare, health insurance, and global health goals. I will use the acquired knowledge from this course to educate my patients about the importance of health insurance and participate in advocating for transparency in all aspects of healthcare, including error reporting. According to Sharbafchi-Zadeh et al. (2017 ), nurse leaders can make the patient’s environment safe by promoting error reporting instead of rebuking their workers who report errors. I also plan to share the knowledge acquired with my colleagues through group discussions to enhance the quality of healthcare.
REFERENCES
Sharbafchi-Zadeh, N., Karimi, S., Molavi Taleghani, Y., & Vejdani, M. (2017). Developing an error reporting system for health centres. Journal of Patient Safety & Quality Improvement, 5(4), 606-615.
Papastavrou, E., Efstathiou, G., Tsangari, H., Suhonen, R., Leino-Kilpi, H., Patiraki, E., … & Jarosova, D. (2012). Patients’ and nurses’ perceptions of respect and human presence through caring behaviours: A comparative study. Nursing Ethics, 19(3), 369-379.