The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.

This book sets the scene for the deliberations on ethics and its application to healthcare in the twenty-first century. The word ethics, in classical Greek, means the “beliefs of the people” the study of what is right and good in human conduct and the justification of such claims. Without a doubt this task is not simply about setting up a list of rights and wrongs. Rather, it is a discussion, a process that helps tease out the real issues and find and teach ethical solutions to complex practical problems. The centrality of the patient is of prime consideration in this book, and the health of the individual patient is the first consideration in the teaching considerations discussed. Applied ethics in healthcare may have lost sight of what traditional ethics was trying to accomplish: a good life for good people over a lifetime in society with others. We must put biomedical ethics into perspective and develop a truly comprehensive approach to health care ethics. On the practical level, we need structures integrating givers ethical perspectives. But, there seems to be a gap and significant perception differences among healthcare providers’ learning environments and actual professional situations. Hence, teaching ethics and healthcare providers values is important to bridge this gap.

Healthcare and technology are at a convergence point where significant changes are poised to take place. The vast and complex requirements of medical record keeping, coupled with stringent patient privacy laws, create an incredibly unwieldy maze of health data needs. While the past decade has seen giant leaps in AI, machine learning, wearable technologies, and data mining capacities that have enabled quantities of data to be accumulated, processed, and shared around the globe. Transforming Healthcare with Big Data and AI examines the crossroads of these two fields and looks to the future of leveraging advanced technologies and developing data ecosystems to the healthcare field. This book is the product of the Transforming Healthcare with Data conference, held at the University of Southern California. Many speakers and digital healthcare industry leaders contributed multidisciplinary expertise to chapters in this work. Authors’ backgrounds range from data scientists, healthcare experts, university professors, and digital healthcare entrepreneurs. If you have an understanding of data technologies and are interested in the future of Big Data and A.I. in healthcare, this book will provide a wealth of insights into the new landscape of healthcare.

This book explores the benefits of digital patient engagement, from the perspectives of physicians, providers, and others in the healthcare system, and discusses what is working well in this new, digitally-empowered collaborative environment. Chapters present the changing landscape of patient engagement, starting with the impact of new payment models and Meaningful Use requirements, and the effects of patient engagement on patient safety, quality and outcomes, effective communications, and self-service transactions. The book explores social media and mobile as tools, presents guidance on privacy and security challenges, and provides helpful advice on how providers can get started. Vignettes and 23 case studies showcase the impact of patient engagement from a wide variety of settings, from large providers to small practices, and traditional medical clinics to eTherapy practices.

Drawing on key international reports and input from leading healthcare practitioners and educators worldwide, this ground-breaking book closely examines the real issues facing medicine and medical education. With a wide-ranging, evidence-based approach, the author identifies key drivers of change in both the developing and developed world.He examin

According to Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access, long waits for treatment are a function of the disjointed manner in which most health systems have evolved to accommodate the needs and the desires of doctors and administrators, rather than those of patients. The result is a health care system that deploys its most valuable resource-highly trained personnel-inefficiently, leading to an unnecessary imbalance between the demand for appointments and the supply of open appointments. This study makes the case that by using the techniques of systems engineering, new approaches to management, and increased patient and family involvement, the current health care system can move forward to one with greater focus on the preferences of patients to provide convenient, efficient, and excellent health care without the need for costly investment. Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access identifies best practices for making significant improvements in access and system-level change. This report makes recommendations for principles and practices to improve access by promoting efficient scheduling. This study will be a valuable resource for practitioners to progress toward a more patient-focused "How can we help you today?" culture.

Active Learning for Digital Transformation in Healthcare Education, Training and Research discusses the potential of advanced training of health professionals as a contributing factor to improve treatment outcomes. By reading this book, professionals who deal with patients with low health literacy will be prepared to promote better access to digital tools, understand the habits of users of health services, and empower engagement. The book contains a set of techniques and instruments associated with health literacy, communication skills and personal development that will enable their application in good daily practices and assist healthcare professionals to promote digital transformation to patients. This is a valuable resource for researchers, graduate students and healthcare professionals who are interested in learning more about how they can be an effective agent of change in healthcare. Discusses the potential of patient education through the training of health professionals to improve patient engagement and adherence to treatment Presents techniques from real-world examples to demonstrate the efficacy of better communication between health professionals and patients, especially in the digital medicine era Outlines digital tools that can be used to strengthen the healthcare professional-patient relationship