Kidney disease is much more common in African American and Latin American populations than in White Americans. African Americans were 30 percent more likely to die from kidney disease than non-Hispanic whites. Widespread health disparities across races persist, despite many successful interventions (Longino & Kramer, 2020). There are psychosocial and economic barriers to diabetes that make African Americans seek help only in the tertiary stages of the disease (King et al., 2018). Despite the continuing downward trend in African American and Latin mortality rates, nurses must continue carrying out actions to ensure the safety of the medical facility for all patients. They need to develop and apply methods to combat the problem under analysis. Effective and consistent interaction with patients and the provision of the necessary treatment information are factors that determine patient satisfaction (Karaca & Durna, 2019). Therefore, nurses need to improve the quality of patient care and, based on patient health data, implement the necessary interventions, especially for clients whose diseases are mainly due to genetic (racial) causes.
There is a problem related to inequalities in health indicators between representatives of different races at this stage. In particular, the African American and Latino communities are most prone to diabetes and kidney disease. Chronic kidney disease is a disease that disproportionately affects members of national minorities and low-income people (Laster et al., 2018). The development of the science of nursing and many studies will improve the quality of services provided. Unfortunately, in many American hospitals, there is an insufficient number of kidney failure nurses. It leads to the fact that nurses with only basic qualifications are involved in caring for a patient with kidney problems, and it is not enough to solve the issues in treating such patients. Nurses who work with diabetes patients are to analyze how well a client’s kidneys are doing and refer patients to a nephrologist if they feel unwell (Garvey & McCarron, 2018). Ensuring access to primary health care for African American and Latino communities can reduce the death rate from diabetes among these populations. Therefore, the role of nurses in disease progression should not be underestimated.
The project aims to develop a plan to improve the quality of services provided by nurses related to kidney disease and diabetes. There is an unmet need among blacks and Hispanics to ensure that public health monitoring is carried out to prevent the occurrence of these diseases. At the stage of prescribing and conducting treatment, nurses should consider the characteristics of patients associated with their ethnic origin and financial situation. In particular, it should be regarded as whether representatives of the less wealthy groups of the colored population can afford expensive medicines (Zhang et al., 2019). In addition, for example, the patient’s national origin determines how they want to spend the last days of their lives (Orlovic et al., 2018). This issue becomes especially relevant when it becomes evident that the client’s illness threatens the client with imminent death. Even though, in general, nurses successfully cope with the care of patients with these diseases, there is still a possibility for improving their (nursing) activities. The high quality of services provided by nurses positively affects patients’ experience in the clinic; it is crucial to improve clients’ emotional attitudes towards the treatment process.
The project is expected to positively impact diabetes and kidney disease treatment, as its essence is to improve the knowledge and skills of nurses in these categories of diseases. As it sometimes happens that diseases and health issues of minorities are not treated as required by health service standards, it is vital to ensure that this category of American citizens receives adequate treatment. In particular, the existence of bias in healthcare professionals based on characteristics such as race and gender is supported by recent research on published articles on this topic (FitzGerald & Hurst, 2017). The project’s result should be, in particular, a decrease in the number of cases when, due to belonging to a national minority, patients were handled worse than, for example—white American patients.
The project’s topic is essential for nurses since the problem of insufficient care of patients with the analyzed diseases remains relevant. They must continually increase their knowledge of the profession to stay successful healthcare workers. First, it is unacceptable to discriminate against African American patients in the nursing profession because it can be considered nationalism. Secondly, such a policy entails negative and sometimes deadly consequences for the health of clients. The fact that dark-skinned and Latins are more susceptible to diseases associated with kidney function should, on the contrary, provoke nurses to search for optimal solutions to this problem.
It is planned to create courses for nurses to acquire knowledge about diabetes and renal diseases. It is also intended to introduce a class on how communication with patients from national minorities should be carried out. Teaching these courses will provide better treatment and meet the needs of clients in need of care. Additionally, the transition to electronic medical records instead of the paper-based system for recording customer information, which is still present in many clinics, will make it possible to create more error-free customer databases. Since EHR and similar innovative devices can monitor the patient remotely, their implementation will help nurses carry out an urgent intervention. The combined application of the indicated solutions to the analyzed problem will give the best result against the increase in the mortality rate among African American and Latin community representatives.
References
Garvey, T. M., & McCarron, N. M. (2018). A nursing perspective of caring for patients with end-stage renal disease in hospitals. Saudi journal of kidney diseases and transplantation: An official publication of the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation, 29(4), 755–765. Web.
Karaca, A., & Durna, Z. (2019). Patient satisfaction with the quality of nursing care. Nursing open, 6(2), 535–545. Web.
King, C. J., Moreno, J., Coleman, S. V., & Williams, J. F. (2018). Diabetes mortality rates among African Americans: A descriptive analysis pre and post Medicaid expansion. Preventive medicine reports, 12, 20–24. Web.
Laster, M., Shen, J. I., & Norris, K. C. (2018). Kidney disease among African Americans: A population perspective. American journal of kidney diseases: The official journal of the National Kidney Foundation, 72(5 Suppl 1), S3–S7. Web.
Longino, K., & Kramer, H. (2020). Racial and ethnic disparities, kidney disease, and COVID-19: A call to action. Kidney medicine, 2(5), 509–510. Web.
Orlovic, M., Smith, K., & Mossialos, E. (2018). Racial and ethnic differences in end-of-life care in the United States: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). SSM – Population Health, 7, 100331. Web.
FitzGerald, C., & Hurst, S. (2017). Implicit bias in healthcare professionals: a systematic review. BMC medical ethics, 18(1), 19. Web.
Zhang, E., Levin, A. M., & Williams, L. K. (2019). How does race and ethnicity effect the precision treatment of asthma? Expert review of precision medicine and drug development, 4(6), 337–356. Web.