Advanced Practice Nurse Addressing Health Care Disparities in Rural Communities
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Advanced Practice Nurse Addressing Health Care Disparities in Rural Communities
Advanced Practice Nurses (APN) refers to nurses with a post-graduate level of education in the nursing profession. Therefore, Advanced Practice Nurses work in specialist capacity because of their high clinical skills and knowledge. Furthermore, Advanced Practice Nurses also have long working experience in the nursing profession. Thus, Advanced Practice Nurses play a significant role in addressing health disparities in rural areas.
Rural residents are unable to access health care services on sexual health, maternal health and mental health due to lack of privacy in the health facilities. Thus, leading to increased fatalities for sexually and mental diseases. Expect mothers in rural communities also prefer giving birth at their home due to lack of privacy in the health care facilities. Hence, leading to lack of specialized medical treatment during labour. Therefore, one of the roles of Advanced Practice Nurse in addressing rural health care disparities is to ensure the privacy of patients reporting in rural health care facilities (Brush et al., 2015).
Health care services in rural communities are hindered because of the limited number of Medical Doctors in rural health care facilities. Therefore, Advanced Practice Nurses carry the responsibility of standing in for Doctors by carrying out other services on behalf of the medical Doctors. Thus, evaluating the patient’s treatment progress is another role of Advanced Practice Nurses in addressing health disparities in rural communities (Bryant et al., 2016). Moreover, Advanced Practice Nurses also address health care disparities by offering guidance and counselling to the patient. They give hope to the patients by ensuring they remain optimistic about recovering from their health conditions. In conclusion, rural communities experience challenges in accessing appropriate health care services. Therefore, Advanced Practice Nurses are given credit on the roles to address health care disparities in rural communities.
References
Bryant‐Lukosius, D., Spichiger, E., Martin, J., Stoll, H., Kellerhals, S. D., Fliedner, M., … & Schwendimann, R. (2016). Framework for evaluating the impact of advanced practice nursing roles. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 48(2), 201-209.
Brush, John E., et al. “2015 ACC health policy statement on cardiovascular team-based care and the role of advanced practice providers.” Journal of the American College of Cardiology 65.19 (2015): 2118-2136.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTk6GAGre4&t=3s.