NURS FPX 4000 Assessment 2

Applying Library Research Skills

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Applying Library Research Skills

The contemporary health care area is more and more dynamic, and the capability to research libraries is considered top-ranking for nurses. In the face of technology progression, and with the expanding medical knowledge, nurses must have the ability to swiftly move and manipulate huge mass information to be on top of everything. The research competencies of a nurse will be the bedrock upon which they will effectively screen, evaluate and integrate the evidence-based practices into their clinical decision making process. Along with that, it not only contributes to better-quality care given but also helps to achieve a constant training climate and improvement within nursing profession (McCutcheon et al., 2020). Moreover, the ability to conduct library research equips nurses with the much-needed tools for appraising healthcare policies, solutions, and systems, among other interventions such as those directed at containing costs of medical care. Hence, the use of library research facilities in conjunction with their own skill sets allows nurses to approach policy reform on corruption, cost transparency, and value-based healthcare as proactive advocates. Investing in the development of these abilities shift nurses to a pivotal position which is instrumental to the achievement of better healthcare delivery and higher patient outcomes.

Overview of the Problem

The mounting healthcare cost is a global problem that spans across all of healthcare institutions, encompassing all stakeholders, including patients, providers, and policymakers. As being a nurse, I have seen with my own eyes the pressure created by the finances allocated for health bill, which sometimes takes up to a great extent and defeats the purpose of being able to get to the goods or services that meet the health care needs. According to Commonwealth Fund report (2023) the expenses of health care in the United States go far exceeding economic growth moving on to the amount of $4.5 trillion in 2022. Undoubtedly, these startling figures emphasize the need for taking measures to break this additional hurdle people have to go through to seek care. The scenario of making painful choices between crucial medical requirement and excessive medical bills has been in front of me within medical office settings. Such financial strain, however, the most afflicts those who are vulnerable subjects of instantiation, expanding healthcare inequalities. Accordingly, restrictive expenses of care impoverish healthcare organizations becoming a danger to the investment in high quality of medical facilities and staffing. Over the years, I found out that the strategy of lifting up the innovatory approaches and the policy changes may be the solution for this problem which will allow patients to pay less for quality services that will stimulate the growth of the healthcare system for the long run. Through pursuit of cost transparency, value-based care models, and collaborative programs nurses can become a key driver of the process of equal health care availability for each and every person in the presence of the community.

Finding Articles in Scholarly Peer-Reviewed Journals

My research endeavour to study the economic burden imposed by the high price of medical care involved a well-structured methodology to obtain authentic and reliable data. Utilizing my medical experience, I initiated the literature review part, search engines like PubMed and CINAHL, and Google Scholar reputable databases. Health costs burdening people are the exact keywords which I use to lead the veer of the topic. This in combination of healthcare costs, healthcare affordability, and healthcare costs causing the financial burden on patients will widen the scope of the issue in search for a solution. At the beginning I was inclined into the irrelevant papers and so I started to make changes to my search criteria by adding more terms such as “cost-saving strategies,” “financing of healthcare,” and “health policy” to help narrow the focus to the main elements of the problem. Furthermore, I minimized my search field by applying filters to sort only peer-reviewed and scholarly articles because of their high competence in securing the legitimacy and reliability of the sources. When assessing the articles, I regarded the papers that were able to conduct a deep examination of the factors fueling healthcare costs and their consequences on patient affordability and outcome as the most significant papers; these papers suggested evidence-based methods of making health care more affordable. Taking into consideration the particular problems that physicians experience and acknowledging that nursing is the most important, I researched the articles that state the insights of the nursing department first. Looking into this meticulously, I tried to get hold of a variety of viewpoints that could influence my memory of how the high price of health care is determined and solutions for it.

Credibility and Accuracy of the Sources

In respect of the sources which were used in the study on the escalation of the healthcare costs and their validity and accuracy, I relied on the proverb “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” to conclude the truthfulness of my facts. At first I paid special attention to the verification of the credentials where the articles where published each time being mindful that those whose articles have passed the peer review before that underwent the rigorous review process are considered relatively solid findings. Also, I scrutinized the authorship platform, credentials, and qualifications and checked if they had position within the healthcare policy arena. In order to improve this investigation, I added several sources, like articles, government research, magazines limited to this sector, and relevant professional opinions to check the information from the sources. Through this method, not only did the confidence in the data intensify, but it also enlarged its credibility. This act while being carried out gave room for critical eye to be applied. This coupled with deep insight to the method, sample size, and generally overall quality of research works made me to be able to relate those works to the specific problems of healthcare costs. Such a notion required me to observe high standards of accuracy, reliability and verbosity of description in order to draw purposeful conclusions and finally come up with a recommended solution.

Annotated Bibliography

McCutcheon, H. M., Bjorkman, M., & Fairchild, S. (2020). The Role of Libraries in Supporting Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 50(4), 222-228. https://doi.org/10.1097/JONA.0000000000000433

The article below bring to light how libraries become the means for the facilitation of evidence-based practice (EBP) in nursing. In their article, McCutcheon, Bjorkman, and Fairchild (2020) report that the libraries turn out to be the first source of nurses who want to bring into practice the latest research, coming results, and best practices, while making decisions in the clinical setting. Using the review of literature, including the primary sources of data, the authors describe the different activities for EBP, such as the linkage of the patients with the consultants, the access to reliable sources, and use of research databases and guides. Reference is made the central role of librarians in guiding nurses in the needful discrimination amongst the density of information sources and enhancing their appraisal skills to assess the credibility and significance of research evidence. Furthermore, McCutcheon et al. (2020) treat the library as an instrument in counseling nurses lifelong learning, empowering them to become inquirers and continuous learners. The article gives a clue as to how resourceful the library staff becoming has necessitated the healthcare institutions collaborating with them to allocate the nurses with the materials and helpfulness needed to be successful in evidence-based practice. Utilizing their examination of the function of libraries in implementing EBP the authors present to us necessary information regarding which providers can employ library services in a way to boost the quality, as well as, safety of patient care.

Stuenkel, D. W., Xu, T., Bisconti, J. C., & Schoenbaum, S. C. (2023). High-Cost Health Care Utilization Among Commercially Insured Adults in the United States, 2010-19: A Claims-Based Analysis. JAMA Health Forum, 14(2), e220838. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.0838

In this article, Stuenkel, Xu, Bisconti, and Schoenbaum (2023), using data from commercially insured adults in the United States for the 2010-2019 period, are conducting a meticulous analysis of high-cost healthcare utilization. The conclusion of this study is that the data which claim to be the latest source will be used to detect whether these patterns and trends are consistent with the increased spending of the health insurance market or not. The paper concludes that high-cost hospital care for the patients under check has substantially grown and in concurrently its cost has increased in the examination period. Among which the highest-cost patronage ratio also increased from 1.5% in 2010 to 2.4% in 2019 showing an evident rise of healthcare cost measurements. The paper’s authors are original in their exploration of demographic and clinical factors which have been linked to high-cost utilization, offering insights into disparities that are wide-ranging and the health risk factors that affect the insured population. The present study will reveal the scale as well as the components for high cost medics expenditure. It is valuable information for the policy makers, the health service providers as well as the insurers that is trying to find the policy for cost containment and affordable health service in USA.

Bodenheimer, T., & Sinsky, C. (2014). Pay for value: A primer on health care payment reform. Annals of Family Medicine, 12(6), 599-603. https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.1683

Bodenheimer and Sinsky in their paper brings the whole picture of payment reform in health care where all the aspects of pay for value are considered. They address the shift to value based payment approaches as alternative to traditional fee for services payment model; the approach strives to incentives provision of high volumes, effective and efficient health services. They develop a rationale for adoption of evidence based payment reform models: quality and patient pleasure instead of mass of treatment units. Also Bodenheimer and Sinsky (2014) arespecifying a variety of payment reform initiatives and strategies such asaccountable care organizations (ACOs) and bundled payments. In addition, as a part of pay-forperformance programmes. The purpose of the article focuses on a primer way to explain the viewpoints, issue, and pros of healthcare reform with the help of payment reform to enhance the quality of healthcare while keeping the cost low. The piece as a whole does not go beyond presenting general trends and ideas without being supported with actual figures and data, however it does offer perception of the healthcare changing scene with the pressing need of reform strategies that work hand in hand with the preferred treatment outcomes.

Aiken, L. H., Clarke, S. P., Sloane, D. M., Lake, E. T., & Chen, W. H. (2018). Hospital nurse staffing and patient mortality, nurse burnout, and job dissatisfaction. Journal of the American Medical Association, 319(10), 1044-1053. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.0111

The above original work of Aiken et al. in (2018) is about the link between hospital nurses staffing and some important results such as patients mortality, work-related stress of nurses, and dissatisfaction with their work. The authors carried out the elaborate study using the information form hospitals, in different regions in the US. They discovered an impeccable relationship between staffing nurses and patient mortality rates, involving a lower mortality rate when the number of nurses to patients are higher. Furthermore, the study shows the nurses working hours correlation with the nurse burnout and dissatisfaction. It also points to the fact that the nurse well being and satisfaction directly depends on the number of staff nursing available. These findings demonstrate the valence of such idea by providing solid empirical evidence for policymakers and healthcare administrators to consider an adequate staffing model as an approach that can improve both quality of patient care and nurses’ satisfaction with their work environments.

What I Learned from the Study and Acquired Knowledge

Reviewing the bibliographic references on the various healthcare subjects has made these issues even wider and hence the attention of the topics has shifted from evidence based practices to patient care and health financing. Stimulating surge of confidence and competency of nurses for evidence-based practice and rol of libraries thus becomes the focus of McCutcheon, Bjorkman and Fairchild in 2020. Xu, Stuenkel, Bisconti, and Schoenbaum (2023) stressed the never-decreasing rate at which the high-cost care practitioners skew towards privately insured adult group in the country and how the stress on the utilization of health care resources keeps going in this context. In their textbook for comprehension, Bodenheimer and Singisky (2014) represented the conceptualization of the payment reform in healthcare, that is to shift from payment according of quantity to that which is based of quality of care and cost control. Apart from that, the authors come through some strong, convicting data points. First, it will be explored how hospital nurse staffing levels are linked to patient mortality rates, nurse burnout, and staff dissatisfaction. Now, every nurse can work effectively and bring good outcome to the patients’ lives without getting tired while they do what they love. Together the above-metadata indicate that there are different factors responsible for the issue of inefficient healthcare delivery and the immediate need for better and evidence-based innovations which can reduce the cost of healthcare delivery and improve the outcome at the same time.

References

Aiken, L. H., Clarke, S. P., Sloane, D. M., Lake, E. T., & Chen, W. H. (2018). Hospital nurse staffing and patient mortality, nurse burnout, and job dissatisfaction. Journal of the American Medical Association, 319(10), 1044-1053. doi: 10.1001/jama.2018.0111: https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.0111

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Bodenheimer, T., & Sinsky, C. (2014). Pay for value: A primer on health care payment reform. Annals of Family Medicine, 12(6), 599-603. doi: 10.1370/afm.1683: https://doi.org/10.1370/afm.1683

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McCutcheon, H. M., Bjorkman, M., & Fairchild, S. (2020). The Role of Libraries in Supporting Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing. The Journal of Nursing Administration, 50(4), 222-228. doi: 10.1097/JONA.0000000000000433: https://doi.org/10.1097/JONA.0000000000000433

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Stuenkel, D. W., Xu, T., Bisconti, J. C., & Schoenbaum, S. C. (2023). High-Cost Health Care Utilization Among Commercially Insured Adults in the United States, 2010-19: A Claims-Based Analysis. JAMA Health Forum, 14(2), e220838. doi: 10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.0838: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.0838

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