1.

Male nursing is on the rise in a female dominated profession. In the Florence Nightingale era, the nursing profession was strictly female dominated (Davies, 2013). According to Davies, under the Nursing Act of 1919, men were to register as nurses separately from women, and were placed in asylums because of their strength to restrain patients (2013). Men were not wanted in the nursing profession because of the fear of them taking over leadership roles. Today, nursing leadership could soon be “influenced strongly by men” (Beal, 2013). Some men choose not to become nurses because it is seen as a female’s job and some men may be made fun of for being a nurse. Male nurses, a lot of times, come from either a military background, used to be a paramedic, or just want to take care of others. I am always open to learning from others with a different perspective because I feel that men think differently than women. I believe that we need more male nurses in all settings because it will allow for a more diverse profession.

2.

Nursing is one of the fastest growing occupation in the U.S. with roughly 3 million registered nurses nationwide (Middaugh,2016). But we are facing a major problem in the healthcare industry and that is nursing shortage. According to Middaugh 2016, some contributors to this issue include the aging population, which increases the number of chronic diseases, the age of the workforce and the age of faculty as well. As the number of Baby Boomers retiring increases, the patient census is likely to increase as well, so it’s important to retain older nurses in the workforce to train new personnel, deliver safe patient care, and decrease the patient-ratio (Middaugh, 2016). By retaining older nurses personnel, some strategies must be implemented that would benefit the organization, for example: quality care and positive patient outcomes can be expected from highly skilled and caring nursing staff, hospital safety and effectiveness can be preserve by preventing expert nurses from retiring, although adaptations to the work environment must be implemented to facilitate the employment of older nurses; investments in new programs is important to keep nurses updated with new and emerging roles, and determination of work-related needs and characteristics of the older nurse is essential to retain them in the workforce (Middaugh, 2016).

Working in a hospital is very stressful and very demanding, and teamwork is one way to decrease the work load for nurses, especially for our older personnel. In my experience, I mostly work with younger nurses because most of our older nurses either retired or resigned to do something else that required less physical strength. By losing our older personnel, I believe we lost the expertise, knowledge, and highly skills they offered to the organization. So, it’s very important to implement strategies to retain the older nurse personnel in the workforce because I believe it benefit the organization and patient care as well.

3.

There are many different specializations within the nurse practitioner field that give nurses options in their career path. The demand for nurse practitioners in the healthcare field has grown tremendously over the last decade. This fact, coupled with much research and governmental influence, has led many nurses to continue their education and earn an advanced degree as a nurse practitioner. Research has shown that nurse practitioners can provide the same care that is equal to or better than their physician counterparts, and provide that level of care at a cheaper cost to patients(Raines, 2014). Governmental regulation for required insurance coverage for all citizens of the United States has also placed a strain on primary care physicians, due to the sheer increase in outpatient visits related to the new insurance coverage provided. Those newly insured under the Affordable Care Act during President Obama’s administration required between 4,000 and 7,000 additional physicians to meet the added primary care needs (Erickson, 2016). Today, many states have barriers in place regarding nurse practitioners. Due to the high demand for healthcare providers in the future, these barriers may be removed to ensure nurse practitioners practice to their full scope in every state. Legislation is already in place in many states regarding this issue. Since the release of the Institute of Medicines report regarding the use of nurse practitioners in 2011, 44 state action coalitions have worked on its recommendation to remove scope-of-practice barriers in restricted states (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016). It is inevitable that the number of nurse practitioners will continue to grow in the future. With this growth, respect will also improve. The days of seeing a primary care physician for family practice is vanishing rapidly and the spring up of urgent care clinics led by nurse practitioners are becoming the way of the future.