Analyzing the fit between Systems Approach and Nursing

1.Introduction

Systems approach of health care delivery constitutes a patient centred health care-system. For the purpose, a four level health care system has been devised. Under this system, the health care has been divided into four levels (1.)The individual patient,(2.)The care team which includes professional care providers like clinicians and pharmacists,(3.)the organization like the hospital, clinic or nursing home which provides support to the development and work of care teams by providing infrastructure and other resources,(4.)The political and economic environment applying to all the above discussions (Brandt& Gardner , 2000).

2. Analysis

At present, the health care delivery system comprises of hospitals where individual departments operate almost autonomously. Clinics, laboratories, pharmacies and all other organizations forming part of the health care delivery system act as separate units. All these together. All these together are called as health care system even though it is not intended to be a system and never functioned as a system, in the true definition by ‘systems approach’ (Brandt& Gardner ,2000).

The shift from the present situation to systems approach requires that every participating division recognizes its influence on all other divisions. Each division will try to achieve highest performance in individual functioning and at the same time contribute to optimizing the performance of a system as a whole (White, 1991).  Moreover an outlook should be developed among the care team members like clinicians in different specialities, pharmacists, nurses, social workers, psychologists that this main motto is the optimum functioning of the system and cooperative functioning by interdependence among them is the key to such optimization (Ollila, 2005).

The Health care system involves many interacting elements. So special tools are required to perform a systems analysis (Brandt& Gardner ,2000). So a model of the health care delivery process must incorporate narrations of processes detailing the variety of activities from nurses administering medicines to examination by doctor, laboratory tests, the filling of prescription by a pharmacist and follow-up visits by the nurse. The model must very clearly lay down the functions of every unit and constituent members. Since the overall performance of the system depends not merely on the performance of clinical side, perfect coordination between administrative wing and clinical wing should be ensured (Ollila, 2005).

3. Summary

True, there will be resistance to systems approach introduction from various quarters, because it results in loss of autonomy, and identity, but the need for betterment of health. Care delivery system warrants the same. Introduction of systems approach requires basically attitudinal changes and not much capital investment. Therefore it should not be difficult to implement it in hospitals where there is a resource crunch(Brandt& Gardner ,2000).

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