Career Plan Template for NURS 4516: Advanced Professional Issues

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NURS 4516: Advanced Professional Issues
Career Plan Template
Winter 2019
Name:
CAREER PLAN ASSIGNMENT: PART ONE
a. Scanning Your Environment:
What health/social issues seem to be worldwide
phenomena?
• What are the nursing issues that seem to be global in their
scope?
In the present generation, life expectancy of people had
increased. Many people are living longer lives. However the
quality of lives have not developed as older cohorts are suffering
from co-morbid disorders. Their numbers are increasing at an
alarming rate that had put huge pressures on nurses to handle
the situation (Fehlings et al., 2015). Handling such number of
patients with complex disorders have become challenging for
them.
• What are the health and social trends in your
Country?
Social determinants of health had become the main concerns that
the government needs to take in consideration. Studies opine

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that poor education, poor employment opportunities, addiction,
inaccessibility to healthcare centers, socioeconomic status,
transport, food and others all determine the health conditions of
individuals. The government presently considers such trends to
be important and policies are gradually developed to handle such
determinants of health successfully
• What are the issues affecting nurses in your
country?
Nursing shortage has huge impacts on nurses as well. Demand of
meeting the needs and expectations of huge number of patients
with low nurse patient ratio becomes challenging for them. When
lesser number of nurses has to handle more number of patients,
they become burned out. Besides, bullying behaviours from
seniors is another issue faced by nurses that affect their morale.
Fatigue, stress, anxiety as well as physical health issues like
headache, spondilytis, muscle stiffness, back pain, digestive
disorders are common due to burnouts. Work-life balances are
getting affected and hence job satisfaction is also affected
• What are some of the important social and
health issues in your local area?

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People belonging to low socio-economic status cannot enjoy
equal healthcare benefits like that of people with high socio-
economic status. Although, government of Canada promotes
health equity and equality in healthcare services, it had not been
met successfully in my local area.
• What are the important nursing issues in your
local area?
The number of patients visiting the primary healthcare centers is
quite higher than the number of nurses who can manage them
and care for them successfully. There are long waiting times and
patients often get agitated. Moreover, nurses also cannot
allocate sufficient time to each patient that affects patient
satisfaction.
• Where are the gaps between patient/consumer
needs and services provided?
Another issue is that the nursing professionals are not culturally
competent to handle patients from diverse cultural backgrounds
and hence the patients are not being able to get culturally
competent care from them (Govere & Govere, 2016). The gap of
cultural traditions, preferences and inhibitions between patients
and nurses are sometime not being realised and handled
effectively by patients. This affects the dignity and autonomy of
patients.