Nurses Are Vital to Hospice,
Outpatient and Primary Health Care
The role of nurses has always been important in providing quality health care in hospitals; however, today’s nurses are transforming health care beyond hospital settings. In addition to reinventing America’s approach to hospice care from “a service that provided a place to die to one that addressed many end-of-life issues and allowed patients to remain in their homes,” nurses have evolved into strong patient advocates and indeed are the sole source of quality, “high-level” health care for many underserved areas and populations in America. And with the possibility of adding more than 35 million newly insured citizens as a result of health care reform, nurses will be even more critical to local and state public health departments and primary care centers.
Highlighted Clip for Tuesday, May 31, 2011:
A nurse is a doctor’s best friend, according to Marvin M. Lipman, Consumers Union’s chief medical adviser. This advice was given to him by a hospital ward’s head nurse when he was a third-year medical student making contact with patients for the first time, along with the suggestion that’d he’d do well not to forget it.
