Health Care Restructuring and Nursing

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the restructuring of the health care system which has been undertaken to improve efficiency and cost cutting. The paper specifically discusses the consequences for nursing of the government's emphasis on efficiency. It analyzes three perspectives, which in combination can produce a number of transformative insights into nursing and efficiency.

From the Paper:

"Nurses are confronted with dilemmas related to efficiency and cost cutting not because of external pressures but because of their own position in the health care system. The principles on which nursing operates include a form of utilitarianism that involves balancing the needs of the individual patient with the needs of the many (Allen, 2004). Nurses also have to balance concern for quality against the opposing concerns of efficiency and cost savings. Another dilemma is that between standardization and individualization (Allen, 2004). The source of these dilemmas is to be found in the nursing profession."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Allen, D. (2004). Re-reading nursing and re-writing practice: Towards an empirically based reformulation of the nursing mandate. Nursing Inquiry, 11 (4), 271-283.
• Nortvedt, P. (2001). Needs, closeness and responsibilities: An inquiry into some rival moral considerations in nursing care. Nursing Philosophy, 2, 112-121.
• Rankin, J. & Campbell, M. (2006). Managing to nurse: Inside Canada's health care reform. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

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