Leveraging Regulation and Legislation to Improve the Care of Older Adults Through Home- and Community-Based Services.

An increase in demand for health care services for older adults is being negatively impacted by lack of a sufficient nursing workforce with competence in home- and community-based services (HCBS). The current article examines the unique challenges and opportunities in caring for older adults in HCBS settings, outlines the core competencies nurses must possess to provide this care, and proposes strategies to leverage legislative and regulatory initiatives to incorporate these competencies into nursing education and practice. Examining the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Essentials Competencies through the HCBS lens, it is an ideal time to create a roadmap for nurses in practice, policy, and education to shape the health care workforce to meet the needs of a diverse and vulnerable population: older adults who depend on home- and community-based care for maintaining or improving their health outcomes and overall quality of life. [Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 49(12), 11-16.].

State Variation in the Utilization of Nurse Practitioner-Provided Home-Based Primary Care: A Medicare Claims Analysis.

Nurse practitioners (NPs) provide an increasing proportion of home-based primary care, despite restrictive scope of practice laws in approximately one half of states. We examined the relationship between scope of practice laws and state volume of NP-provided home-based primary care by performing an analysis of 2018 to 2019 Medicare claims. For each state we calculated the proportion of total home-based primary care visits by NPs and the proportion of all NPs providing home-based primary care. We used the 2018 American Association of Nurse Practitioners classification of state practice environment. We performed chi-square tests to assess the significance between volume and practice environment. We found that 42% of home-based primary care is delivered by NPs nationally, but substantial variation exists across states. We did not find a discernible or statistically significant pattern of uptake of NP-provided home-based primary care across full, reduced, or restricted states. [Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 49(5), 11-17.].

From Nursing Assistant to Nurse: Scoping Review of Transitional Career Opportunities.

Nursing assistants (NAs) are an integral component of the older adult nursing care team. Although NAs provide the majority of hands-on care, they often experience disproportionate personal and professional challenges related to their roles and responsibilities. Likewise, NAs may have minimal opportunity to transition into a nursing career. The purpose of the current scoping review was to identify and examine nursing career transition pathways designed for NAs. A scoping review of the literature revealed nine career transition programs designed for this unique sector of the nursing workforce. Although NAs may express a desire to transition into a nursing career, sparse programs have been implemented. Effective NA-to-nurse career transition programs may help improve NAs' personal and professional outcomes, older adults' care outcomes, and ultimately, improve diversity in the nursing workforce. [Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 48(2), 36-42.].

Implementation of an older person's nurse practitioner in rural aged care in Victoria, Australia: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: There are staff shortages nation-wide in residential aged care, which is only predicted to grow as the population ages in Australia. The aged care staff shortage is compounded in rural and remote areas where the health service workforce overall experiences difficulties in recruitment and retention. There is evidence that nurse practitioners fill important service gaps in aged care and rural health care but also evidence that barriers exist in introducing this extended practice role. METHODS: In 2018, 58 medical and direct care staff participated in interviews and focus groups about the implementation of an older person's nurse practitioner (OPNP) in aged care. All 58 interviewees had previously or currently worked in an aged care setting where the OPNP delivered services. The interviews were analysed using May's implementation theory framework to better understand staff perceptions of barriers and enablers when an OPNP was introduced to the workplace. RESULTS: The major perceived barrier to capacity of implementing the OPNP was a lack of material resources, namely funding of the role given the OPNP's limited ability to self-fund through access to the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS). Staff perceived that benefits included timely access to care for residents, hospital avoidance and improved resident health outcomes. CONCLUSION: Despite staff perceptions of more timely access to care for residents and improved outcomes, widespread implementation of the OPNP role may be hampered by a poor understanding of the role of an OPNP and the legislative requirement for a collaborative arrangement with a medical practitioner as well as limited access to the MBS. This study was not a registered trial.

[Nurse coordinator and doctor coordinator in a gerontology network]. / Infirmière coordinatrice et médecin coordonnateur dans un réseau gérontologique.

The Marseille gerontology network consists of a geriatric team providing support in patients' homes across the Marseille urban area. It forms an integral part of the geriatric care sector ensuring that elderly people living at home benefit from a global medical-psychological-social assessment. The aim is to enable elderly people to continue living and receiving care in their home.

How UK-trained nurse volunteers working overseas can reduce healthcare inequalities.

Universal health coverage is an ambitious goal central to the eradication of poverty in low and middle-income countries. However, the number of qualified staff working in developing countries is not sufficient to meet the needs of the most vulnerable, and professional development opportunities for nurses are rare or non-existent. This article explores how UK-trained nurses can support the training of colleagues working in regions where resources are limited, and provides examples of current voluntary projects in old age care taking place in Sri Lanka and Nepal. It discusses the contribution that nurses can make to the reduction of healthcare inequalities worldwide and reflects on the benefits that such experiences can have on nursing practice in the UK.

Working holistically to provide safe care.

Supporting the elderly to live safely at home is the aim of one of the country's newest nurse practitioners, older adults, Sheryl Haywood.

Community-based care of the elderly in rural Japan: a review of nurse-led interventions and experiences.

Nurses play a critical role in delivering care to elderly people at primary health care level but there is no synthesis of research knowledge to guide community nursing practice in Japan. This review aims to identify nurse-led interventions that have been found to improve elder health at village level; the barriers and constraints that service providers face when delivering care to the elderly; and the experiences of elderly people and their caregivers. The electronic databases such as MEDLINE, CINAHL and Google Scholar were searched to retrieve peer-reviewed primary research literature. A narrative synthesis of the findings sections of the papers was applied to identify key themes. These themes are: socioculturally appropriate care; health improvements; barriers and constraints to care delivery and; experience of the elderly and families. Seven papers were included in the review. The synthesis identified that nurse-led health care for the elderly in rural Japan can be effective when it is targeted and culturally sensitive. The studies highlight a number of barriers to the provision of care. There is a need for further research to examine the issues affecting access to rural nursing care including health system factors, as well as the needs of the elderly and families themselves. Such studies will better inform the delivery of programs, reduce inequity and provide socio-culturally appropriate care to improve the well-being of the elderly.

Gerontological nurses' perceptions of their rights in Finland.

BACKGROUND: These are challenging times for gerontological nurses, due to the increasing need for older people care services and nursing expertise and to the burdensome nature of older people care. These changes also challenge professional ethics. Traditionally, literature has focused more on nurses' duties and responsibilities, rather than on their rights. AIM: The aim was to explore the concept of nurses' rights from the perspective of nurses in gerontological care. METHODS: A qualitative study conducted among gerontological nurses (n = 29) in the older people care of two publicly provided municipal older people care organisations in two mid-range towns in Finland. Participation in the study was voluntary, and the participants were recruited in collaboration with a nurse executive. The data, collected in 11 interviews (1-4 participants in each) using open-ended interview method, were analysed by inductive content analysis. FINDINGS: Based on our findings, nurses' rights are an integral part of everyday nursing. As professionals, nurses pointed out that their rights are based on legislation and ethics, and their rights involve colleagues, managers, organisation, and patients and relatives. Their rights were connected to nurses' professional expertise and their well-being at work, but at the end, they were a factor to improving quality of older people care. This required that nurses' rights were taken as visible and elementary part of management. CONCLUSION: On the basis of our findings, especially in very demanding areas of nursing, like older people care, nurses' rights deserve major visibility and should be taken into consideration when planning care.

'The night is for sleeping': how nurses care for conflicting temporal orders in older person care.

This paper examines the conflicting temporal orders of the regional nurse, a role which has been introduced to deal with the increasing demands of aged care and workforce shortages in regional settings. We build on ethnographic research in the Netherlands, in which we examine regional district nurses as a new professional role that attends to (sub)acute care needs, connecting and coordinating different places of care during out of office hours. We use the concept of 'temporal regional order' to reflect on the different ways caring practices are temporally structured by management and care practitioners, in close interaction with patients and informal care givers. In the results three types of disruptions of the regional temporal order are distinguished: interfering bodily rhythms and needs; (un)expected workings of technologies; and disrupting acts of patient and relatives. It was region nurses' prime responsibility to stabilise these interferences and prevent or soften a disruption of the regional order. In accomplishing this, we show how nurses craft their professional role in between various care settings, without getting involved too much in patient care, to be mobile as 'temporal caregivers'.

[Building the gerontological performance of nurses in Family Health Programs]. / Construindo o fazer gerontológico pelas enfermeiras das Unidades de Estratégia Saúde da Família.

The goal of this article is to analyze the development of gerontological nurses working in the Family Health Program in a municipal district in Belém, PA. Data have been collected through interviews with 14 nurses between 08/2009 and 02/2010 and have been analyzed using the content analysis method to generate topics. One such topic is the theme of this article: building gerontological work, and the sub-topics are the following: nursing consultation, home visits, family care, and seeking partnerships for integrated actions. According to the results, it may be inferred from nurses performing gerontological tasks that work is hampered primarily by urban violence, the inefficient functional structure of services and poor specific geriatric training. However, nurses have built a special "making of gerontology" by creating strategies of integrated actions according to each new situation that has been presented.

Elder veteran program: A description of a nurse practitioner-led inpatient geriatric consult model.

ABSTRACT: This article describes the Elder Veteran Program (EVP), a nurse practitioner (NP)-led inpatient consult service at one Midwestern Veterans Administration (VA) hospital. The EVP was designed to address the needs of older hospitalized veterans and serves as a model that uses geriatric expert clinicians as mentors to grow geriatric expertise. Unique to EVP, nurses are coached to identify high-risk older veterans, initiate the consult process to drive geriatric medical and nursing review, and implement best geriatric nursing practice. As a result of EVP implementation, there was a 13-fold increase in the number of older hospitalized veterans receiving geriatric evaluation. The EVP highlights how NPs lead implementation of an evidence-based program that creates a path for engaging, educating, and growing geriatric nursing knowledge and skill while improving veteran access to geriatric sensitive care.

A brighter future?

More than half of care home residents in England do not have access to the NHS services they need, Care Quality Commission data reveal. Staff in many homes are struggling and often unsupported. Possible improvement rests on the new clinical commissioning groups being willing to provide healthcare services for care home residents.