Curriculum Foundations in Recent Years Term Paper

The political climate within the United States is one moving away from conventional medical practices and moving toward alternative medicine. With President Obama's healthcare reform bill, it was made clear that costs within healthcare and the liability from certain procedures is unacceptable. Educating nurses in natural birthing techniques saves hospitals the excessive expenses associated with interventions and results in a happier and less likely to complain patient. Very few hospitals within the United States open support natural birth techniques. In fact, most nurses at the hospital were unaware of different birthing positions, the advantages of walking while in labor, or the advantages of water during labor. This ignorance will only result in a loss of patients who will seek out those hospitals with educated staff. Finally, the demographics within the hospital I observed demand better care. The families entering the labor and delivery floor were educated upper-class families who expected the nurses to be fully educated and helpful.

The two ways that the curriculum should evolve is continued funding for mid-wife certification and in-house training for all nurses. This hospital has taken the initial steps to move in the direction of this educational curriculum model by offering to subsidize midwifery training for their nursing staff; however, educational materials can be much more easily and inexpensively crafted to detail the same information to the nurses and make the material common knowledge at the hospital.This would benefit the hospital regarding the final external factor of costs. Regardless of this hospital's location, its funding is relatively scarce. This being the case, providing educational material that all nurses have access to would eliminate the need for additional paperwork and subsidies. It would also allow the nurses the ability to further ensure patient satisfaction and increase the prospective return care rate should the women require additional nursing services.

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