As a nursing manager, I would choose total patient care for my team as a care delivery model. Total patient care is a method of care provision that allocates all the time of one professional to a single patient. This specialist is responsible for the whole treatment process during his or her shift.
The main advantage of such approach is that patients receive an intensive and focused care (King, Long, & Lisy, 2014). This often positively affects the patients’ satisfaction with their experience at a healthcare facility as they often see and closely communicate with one specific person. Another benefit of total patient care is that nurses engaged in only one case could better concentrate on managing it. Utilization of such approach also allows professionals to practice a variety of skills and methods of treatment, which is beneficial for their further practice and overall scope broadening.
Among disadvantages, one can name lack of interprofessional exchange, a heavy burden of responsibility, and excessive time allocation of a nurse to a patient (Kelly, 2015). When nurses spend most of their shift trying to adequately manage a patient care without consulting their colleagues it could lead to biased care decisions. More experienced colleagues could provide a valuable advice or help manage stress. Above that, a fresh look at the case could rarely be excessive. Some nurses due to their personal traits can feel uncomfortable carrying the weight of their decisions alone and prefer working in a team. Therefore, the productivity of their individual practice could be worse. Some patients may not require so much as a whole shift of a nurse, and the professionals’ time could be used more productively.
To my mind, previously abused nurses may encounter certain difficulties when they are required to treat patients manifesting the consequence of similar events. Firstly, according to van der Wath, van Wyk, and van Rensburg (2013), there are serious concerns for the psychological health of nurses who would have to unwillingly relive their unpleasant memories. A nurse can become biased and share their own experience instead of focusing emotionally on the patient. On the other hand, there is a strong chance that through sharing patient and nurse will form a connection that would greatly benefit treatment outcomes (Trevillion et al., 2012). An emotional bond can certainly help the patient to recover more effectively, but the costs for a healthcare provider could also be high.
The nurse who experienced domestic violence may know what negative emotions a patient feels at the moment and help address them in a non-destructive way. For a nurse, it could also be beneficial in the manner that helping others with the same problem could nurture professionalism and enhance the capacity to engage emotionally with other patients. Such an effect on practice may depend on the mental stability and the degree of problem acknowledgment among previously abused nurses (van der Wath et al., 2013). If they underwent professional psychological treatment and developed full awareness and adequate emotional responses, then such nurses could be more effective in treating patients with similar symptoms. Otherwise, a nurse who is still emotionally unstable and has unresolved psychological problems concerning the case of abuse has a questionable capacity to help others. Both researcher teams suggest that there is a need for clear guidelines and supportive policies for nurses on how to treat patients who experienced home abuse (van der Wath et al., 2013; Trevillion et al., 2012).
References
King, A., Long, L., & Lisy, K. (2014). Effectiveness of team nursing compared with total patient care on staff wellbeing when organizing nursing work in acute care ward settings: A systematic review protocol. JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Implementation Reports, 12(1), 59-73.
Trevillion, K., Howard, L. M., Morgan, C., Feder, G., Woodall, A., & Rose, D. (2012). The response of mental health services to domestic violence: A qualitative study of service users’ and professionals’ experiences. Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 18(6), 326-336.
Van der Wath, A., van Wyk, N., & Janse van Rensburg, E. (2013). Emergency nurses’ experiences of caring for survivors of intimate partner violence. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 69(10), 2242–2252. Web.