Role of U.S. Nurses

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Role of U.S. Nurses Ohio University Role of U.S. Nurses I feel that nurses need to look at their responsibility as extending globally. The World Health Organization estimates that the world currently needs four million more health care providers and that those that we do have are not evenly distributed. For instance, Africa has 25% of the world’s disease burden but only 3% of the global health care resources and 1% of the world’s health care workers. North America, on the other hand, has 3% of the world’s disease burden and 25% of the global health care resources and 30% of the world’s health care workers (Bolt, 2011). According to J. Bolt, “Nurses are better suited than doctors to promote health and more likely to be where the problems are” (Bolt, 2011, p. 1). In both the richer and poorer countries of the world chronic, non-communicable disease is surpassing infectious disease and their health systems are not adjusting. There are many more nurses than doctors available in the world. With the advancement of chronic disease in both under developed and developed countries, there is a greater need globally for nurses who can promote health and provide intervention. Nurse practitioners can provide services much like general practitioners, specialty nurses can act as midwives and certified nurse anesthetists can provide anesthesia, while nurses without specialty training can provide care, education and healthcare resources so desperately needed. To me the greatest advantages of nurses leading the way toward global health are understated. Nurses are more interested in health promotion and disease prevention, while nearly 99% of medical education is about diagnosing and treating diseases. Nurses are better at working in teams than doctors who are more individualistic and many nurses seem to have an easier time thinking about systems,

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