Essay NR500-10532 Week 3 Addressing Bias LT

Essay NR500-10532 Week 3 Addressing Bias LT

NR500-10532 Week 3 Addressing Bias LT

Ageism in health Care System

My specialty track is nursing informatics. According to The American Medical Informatics Association, Informatics is defined as the cognitive science involves in advance social science and computer in how to use data informational and knowledge to improve and delivery health care services (Chamberlain College of Nursing, 2019). When you look back couple decades ago, how we have to record every patient’s health record and every step of the care in paper form. How it has transition now to one-finger tip away. We can record our heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and sleep pattern, activity records in our smart phone these days. Everything is one fingertip away. Electronic health record is such a groundbreaking for the healthcare community. With the dynamic health care community and expending technologies produce complex ethical issues that influences nursing practice and health outcomes.

Bias can produce systemic stereotyping and discrimination against people seeking for health equality (Karin, O. M., & Mark, L. S., 2020). In a personal level, our own belief and attitudes toward older adults can hinder their treatment, decision-making, and health outcomes. For instance; in a hospital setting, the geriatric population typically come in with a bag of medication, and some nurses would stereotyped the patients are poor with decision-making or confused because of multiple medications effects. Almost every geriatric has a diagnosis of “confused” in their chart. When an older adult 80-year-old or older come in with no medical history and does not take any medications, some nurses would think that is “impossible”, he/she probably has not seen a doctor in years, or they might have forgotten their medical history or medications list. As we pre-label the geriatric patients as dependent and confused, hence it prevents independency. As nurses, we are told to promote independency to all of our patients, so they can transition to home life when being discharge from hospital. Being able to understand and be mindful of ageism can help promote human dignity, respect and values in varied health settings.
NR500-10532 Week 3 Addressing Bias LT

As a prospective nurse in health informatics, one particular bias I have toward people with various cultural, gender, sexual orientation, age, weight, and religions other my own is age in particular. I think it is more challenge to teach the older population to access their own electronic health records. Have you ever given discharge instructions to the older adult and they would ask you to print a copy of their lab works and imaginings or a copy of their prescriptions? As we becoming more eco-friendly, reducing printing paper is imperative to the environment. Every time I tell my patients they can access their electronic health records on-line or through the hospital application on the smartphone. They would give me a perplexed look. If anybody has to train their grandparents to use social media, it is like teaching a kid learns to ride bicycle. They need practice and more practice. It is a very time consuming task. We can sit in the patient for half-a-day to provide the teaching process. I think exposing older adults to electronic health records would be the biggest challenge and barrier in health care and in my specialty track as health informatics nurse.

However, for every problem there is a solution, one strategy to reduce this bias or stereotype of ageism with electronic health records. We can implement “how to access your health records” in discharge instructions. To be more specific and detailed, we can create a video on how to access the health record in the video with step-by-step instructions. A patient care technician can provide the teaching before the patient left the hospital or even help with creating a new account. This is like teaching a patient how to use a commode. It is within the patient care technician scope of practice. Nurses can delegate the task to any available patient care technician, and it would not restrict their time to provide care for other patients.
NR500-10532 Week 3 Addressing Bias LT

In addition, hospital and other health care organization can reduce ageism by provide training to the key players includes hospital administrators, doctors, nurses, and other health care related professionals. Acknowledge and work collaboratively to reduce ageist attitudes in patients and their family caregivers cannot be neglected (Wyman M.F., Shiovitz-Ezra S., Begel J., 2018). The health care system can be improved in eliminating ageism as we work together to provide education and awareness on ageism. Essay NR500-10532 Week 7 Cultivating Healthful Environments LT
References

Informatics Resources. (2019). In Chamberlain School of Nursing. Retrieved from https://library.chamberlain.edu/c.php?g=930378&p=6704230

Karin, O. M., & Mark, L. S. (2020, January 23). Not for Doctors Only: Ageism in HealthCare. In American Society on Aging. Retrieved from https://www.asaging.org/blog/not-doctors-only-ageism-healthcare

Wyman, M. F., Shiovitz, j., & Bengel, J. (2018). Ageism in Health Care System: Providers, Patients, and Systems (Vol. 19, pp. 193-212). N.p.: Contemporary Prospectives on Ageism o. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-73820-8_13

NR500-10532 Week 3 Addressing Bias LT