Introduction
Social justice spins around human rights and societal equality ideologies. Social justice is all about giving privileges and fair opportunities to all individuals globally. It aims to readdress the inequalities based on genders, races, disability, ages, religion, or other less vulnerable social characteristics. Social injustice, commonly referred to as discrimination, predominantly affects social justice globally in all sectors, pushing political and influential leaders to create awareness against social injustice, which has become a global threat. Healthcare is not an exception field as matters and issues against the social injustice crisis have been reported.
Social injustice in healthcare pertains to training of nurses to create awareness through advocating the rights and protection of the patients. The roles of a nurse are to act as the intermediaries between the patients and the doctor, providing effective and efficient medical care to the patients. Thus, social justice in health care portrays the delivery of high-quality care per nursing ethics and values without any discrimination to enhance the achievement of social justice and ensure the whole society achieves and maintains a high level of healthy wellbeing.
Fundamentals of Social Justice in Nursing
According to nursing ethics and morals, social justice ideology requires all nursing and medical field practitioners to keenly uphold the legal and human-centred philosophy about health core values. Hence, it is essential to understand social justice as a fundamental nursing practice since it is the foundation of all practical and efficient public health services. In society, fair and just actions are essential as they benefit the given community and the nation. According to the World Health Organization, effective and efficient health care is mandatory for every individual (Artiga et al., 2020). However, with increased demands and global societal discrimination over the last decades, the gap between quality health care has widened between the marginalized and the privileged in society.
The human rights activists support social fairness as a fundamental element since it incorporates the nursing practice and the medical field as a primary, providing holistic health care to a particular individual and a community translating to global. In nursing, social justice deals with the fair allocation of health services effectively to the individual and the opportunity sharing of duties within the facility. During opportunity allocation, a lack of cooperation between the nurses in the facility causes disparity, which transmits poor quality health care to patients (Abu, 2020). The social determinant of health includes food, employment, income, housing, safety, and other fundamental determinants in enhancing social justice in nursing.
The Relationship Between Social and Diversity, Patient- and Family-Centred Care
The patient’s relationships centred care refers to a health care focus on the types of relationships the providers need to address the health care services provided in the facilities. The relations types include; the provider relationship with the patients, the provider relationship with the other providers in the facility, the community of the social connection and finally, the relationship with the family-centred care. These relationship approaches enhance the improvement of healthcare service quality that sees fair service deliverance to all individuals. The patient and family-centred care relationship model enables understanding and analyzing how patients might be treated and handled by the whole health care system when seeking the services. Thus, health services being a core value in any nation, we conclude by comparing social diversity with the patient and family-care preparedness approach.
All the methods advocate improving quality health care for individuals, families, and communities in a diversified manner, translating into a social justice service (Park et al., 2018). Also, during the allocation of employment opportunities in health care services, the social and the diversity approach advocates for free and fair allocation of options, thus creating cooperation, harmony and unity within the health care services hence quality services to all individuals.
During my nursing field experiences, I faced a health care issue, whereas I handled a teenage girl with pregnancy complications as a nurse. Having gotten the pregnancy while in school, she was forced to drop out after family pressure and torture, forcing her to have psychological traumas affecting her pregnancy journey. It posed mandatory healthcare surveillance, whereas it could lead to death or loss of the unborn baby. Coming from such conflicting background, she had no family support during the whole medical care services. It contradicts the FCC arguments that the best way to meet patient safety is through having support from the family.
As healthcare practitioners, we all have the mandate to embrace change, control and support families and society members who have no voice in promoting societal changes. It is essential to understand that maintaining an effective and efficient relationship approach in the health care facility promotes the wellbeing and the health of individuals, families, and whole societies.
The Health Care Disparities
Healthcare disparities refer to the differences in accessing available medical resources and services based on social discrimination, including ages, sex, genders, economic class, ethnicity, and other drawbacks. In nursing practices, barriers such as education, employment, environment, and socioeconomic status can influence patients’ accessibility to health care (McQuaid & Landier, 2018). It promotes the social injustice ideologies in the health care fraternity affecting the less privileged in the society. The WHO should create strict rules that will oversee legal action against the clinicians who portray social injustice to any individual.
The societal inequality leads to increased mortality rates for the less privileged in the society with high depression to the people who cannot access better medical services. Overall, the disparities in health and health care for the people of colour and the less privileged groups have been longstanding challenges. In addition, these health care disparities are driven by the underlying societal and economic injustices. The World Health Organization advocates for equity as a priority to all individuals urging both private and public health care practitioners to wholly put all nursing and medical ethics to put efforts to reduce health disparities.
The healthcare disparity currently includes COVID-19, the ongoing police brutality, societal discrimination, increased psychological health problems, Asian hate crimes, migrant bias, and many others that have openly brought about health care disparities. The humanitarian activist, media house, and influential people have been at the forefront to create awareness against social health disparities. Addressing these health care inequalities would greatly help, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, which has seen many people affected globally, posing societal imbalance.
It is crucial to understand that healthy people goal is always the aim of any nation; thus, curbing the disparities potholes would greatly aid in preventing further widening of these social health care disparities (Artiga et al., 2020). Therefore, narrowing the health disparities is a primary key in improving the overall national growth and development. It also aids in reducing unnecessary health care budgets not only to the government but also to the local citizens.
Recommendations and Conclusion
The demand for effective health care in nursing practices increases with hospitals, patients, and daily global pandemics. Also, this has posed a challenge evidenced by increased social healthy inequalities and health care disparities globally. Hence, calling for the promotion of health care facilities and fair services to society without any discrimination in terms of age, skin colour, sex, nationality, ethnicity, or any societal class. To promote and maintain effective and efficient health care service providence in the society, the following approaches can aid in promoting health care services to all individuals, even less privileged. The health care and the health ministry can build a firm health policy to oversee the service progress rating.
Healthcare should enhance a supportive environment that will aid in creating teamwork thus quality service deliverance. The healthcare service providers should prioritize the community needs and satisfaction in every healthcare sector. Finally, the health personnel should be mentored occasionally to consistently maintain excellent personal skills in the line of duty, keenly adhering to all health ethics and morals.
References
Abu, V. K. (2020). Let us be unequivocal about social justice in nursing. Nurse Education in Practice, 47, 102849.
Artiga, S., Orgera, K., & Pham, O. (2020). Disparities in health and health care: Five key questions and answers. Kaiser Family Foundation. Web.
McQuaid, E. L., & Landier, W. (2018). Cultural issues in medication adherence: disparities and directions. Journal of General Internal Medicine,33(2), 200-206.
Park, M., Lee, M., Jeong, H., Jeong, M., & Go, Y. (2018). Patient-and family-centred care interventions for improving the quality of health care: a review of systematic reviews. International journal of nursing studies, 87, 69-83.