Dying in America, Coursework Example

The DNP role represents a complex and comprehensive strategy to provide care and treatment across many areas. Comprehensive care requires an understanding of core competencies that influence patient health and wellbeing, using the recommendations set forth by the Institute of Medicine (Honig, Reinisch, & Smolowitz, 2010). These competencies must reflect an understanding of the emotional and spiritual context of patient care as provided by knowledgeable and experienced professionals who work to align their strategies with patient needs (IOM, 2014). It is important to empower DNP-level nurses to provide comprehensive care that reaches many people and supports an understanding of the dynamics of patient needs across many areas, given their ability to improve quality-based measures and address new opportunities to provide care in a unique manner (Wang & Cao, 2015). Comprehensive care also contributes to a greater level of efficiency within the practice environment and supports cost reductions and a lower number of patient hospitalizations (Bazemore, Patterson, Peterson, & Phillips, 2015).

Perhaps most important to the discussion of comprehensive care requires a high degree of knowledge regarding patient needs, symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment methods. Nurses as clinicians must identify a means of working collaboratively with patients that will meet the necessary objectives and support standards of care that will have positive and lasting benefits, while also considering how a comprehensive approach is effective in reducing lengthy hospitalizations and other needs that are preventable under these standards (Haggerty et.al, 2011). DNP nurses must be able to utilize a diverse skillset to accomplish many different objectives in treating patients and enabling them to improve their quality of life through such factors as health promotion and disease prevention in different ways (Smolowitz, 2011). This reflects the importance of understanding the need for and intent of comprehensive care in the context of patient care quality and the primary objectives of the nursing profession to meet these needs.

References

Bazemore, A., Petterson, S., Peterson, L. E., & Phillips, R. L. (2015). More comprehensive care among family physicians is associated with lower costs and fewer hospitalizations. Annals of Family Medicine, 13(6), 206-213. doi:10.1370/afm.1787

Haggerty, J. L., Beaulieu, M. D., Pineault, R., Levesque, J. F., Santor, D. A., Bouharaoui, F., & Beaulieu, C. (2011). Comprehensiveness of care from the patient perspective: Comparison of primary healthcare evaluation instruments. Healthcare Policy, 7(2), 154-166. doi:10.12927/hcpol.2011.22637

Honig, J., Reinisch, C., & Smolowitz, J. (2010). The DNP competencies and performance objectives of comprehensive care. In J. Smolowitz, J. Honig, & C. Reinisch (Eds.),

Writing DNP clinical case narratives: Demonstrating competency and evaluating competency in comprehensive care (1st ed., pp. 11-28). New York, NY: Springer.

Institute of Medicine (2014). Dying in America: Improving quality and honoring individual preferences near the end of life. Washington, DC: Institute of Medicine.

Smolowitz, J. (2011). Chapter twenty two: Reflective response. In H. M. Dreher & M. E. Glasgow (Eds.), Role development for doctoral advanced nursing practice (1st ed., pp. 432-433). New York, NY: Springer.

Wang, X., & Cao, H. (2015). A meta-analysis of comprehensive care on quality of life in patients with lung cancer. Journal of Cancer Research and Therapeutics, 11(4), 112-114. doi:10.4103/0973-1482.163860