Nurse Skills for Non-Communicable Disease Managing in the Primary Care Setting in South Africa.
This article is an annotated bibliography on current global health issues in terms of the priorities and interventions to deal with this global health problem. The issue that I chose to focus on is the rise in the number and expertise of the specialists who prevent, treat and care for the various chronic non-communicable ailments particularly in most of the unindustrialized nations since this has been a great problem worldwide. I decided to focus on this topic because non-communicable diseases have brought a great burden, especially to the developing countries. However, the number of experienced and qualified healthcare practitioners who are involved in the management of this global health issue has seen an upward trend (Bauer, Briss, Goodman & Bowman, 2014). Non-communicable diseases also commonly referred to as chronic diseases take a long period of time which is due to a combination of environmental, physiological, genetic and behavioural factors. These illnesses include cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and heart attack, respiratory diseases like COPD and asthma, cancers and asthma (Muka et al. 2015).
Each year, around fifteen million people die from the non-communicable diseases from the age of 30 years and 70 years and many of these demises happen in the unindustrialized countries (Leeder, Jowsey & McNab, 2018). The health sector has had inventions and priorities to deal with these diseases through extensive training of healthcare professionals who are involved in the management of these illnesses (Ding et al. 2016). The healthcare professionals are now being trained to acquire vital skills that are needed to enable them to help patients to overcome non-communicable illnesses (Duckett & Willcox, 2015). This assistance is through having the ability to advise patients against smoking, bodily inactivity, unwholesome diets and extreme alcohol intake which increases the risk of dying from these illnesses especially in the developing countries (Chaker et al. 2015). Therefore, the three articles that I chose focuses on the improvement in skills of healthcare professionals in terms of having the capabilities of early detection, screening as well as effective treatment of non-communicable diseases which are the main components of the response to non-communicable diseases.
Nurse Skills For Non-Communicable Disease Managing In The Primary Care Setting In South Africa.
Fairall, L. R., Folb, N., Timmerman, V., Lombard, C., Steyn, K., Bachmann, M. O., … & Gaziano, T. (2016). Educational outreach with an integrated clinical tool for nurse-led non-communicable chronic disease management in primary care in South Africa: a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial. PLoS medicine, 13(11), e1002178.
In this article, the authors focus on the professional skills that are required by nurses to manage different non-communicable disease in South Africa which is one of the developing countries with this health problem. According to this article, non-communicable ailments have been the leading reason of death especially in the third world countries and therefore the health professionals should develop new skills so as to be able to deal with this global issue through prioritization, interventions and innovations in the primary care setting. Training of health professionals on effective and affordable treatment prevents the complications that would arise due to these illnesses. The authors state that in the underdeveloped countries, the upkeep for patients with is mostly given by the nurses. There are numerous importance of nurse substitution, supplementation and training in the high-income countries while in the low-income countries it is inadequate. The Primary Care 101 (PC 101) is a program that has been designed so as to support and expand the role and skills of the nurse in non-communicable disease care. This model involves training nurses in the medical managing with improved prescribing requirements. The authors of this article evaluate the effect of this program on the improvement of the primary care nurses’ skills and capacity to manage non-communicable diseases.
Opinions by Health Experts on the Receptiveness of Community Health Stations Concerning Non-Communicable Ailments in Vietnam
The trial design comprised 38 public primary care hospitals in South Africa. The nurses involved in the managing of non-communicable sicknesses were competent to use the PC 101 administration device and given the skill, authority and abilities to be able to prescribe a wide range of medication for most of the non-communicable illnesses. The control clinics were allowed to continue using the old skills and the Practical Approach.
According to this article, the study results showed that in the clinics where the nurses were given new skills and training and the authority to dispense a wide range of drugs, the treatment of the non-communicable diseases was superior and there was a great improvement in the health of the patients as compared to the control clinics. Therefore, it is evident that multimorbidity, deprived recognition and lack of appropriate skills that are necessary to control non-communicable ailments are the common source of the many problems brought about by these illnesses. Therefore, the physicians should have the right skills to give the interventions that are needed to limit the adverse effects that could be caused by the non-communicable diseases on the individual’s personal health and the quality of life.
Conclusion and Relevance
The authors conclude that the skills gained by the healthcare professionals through training in the managing of non-communicable ailments were safe, feasible and led to improved patient outcomes. The relevance of this study is that it added important literature and information on the topic of the rise in the sum and skills of the specialists who stop, treat and manage the various chronic non-communicable illnesses specially in most of the undeveloped nations and the importance of these new skills.
The main limitations of this study are that the research was dependence on self-reported diagnosis, limited information on the uptake of PC 101 by the users, limited resources to measure significant health outcomes and the reliance on the process outcome.
Opinions By Health Experts On The Receptiveness Of Community Health Stations Concerning Non-Communicable Ailments In Vietnam
Kien, V. D., Van Minh, H., Giang, K. B., Ng, N., Nguyen, V., & Eriksson, M. (2018). Views by health professionals on the responsiveness of commune health stations regarding non-communicable diseases in urban Hanoi, Vietnam: a qualitative study. BMC health services research, 18(1), 392.
This study aims at the role that the health professionals play in the delivery of health care in dealing with the problem of non-communicable sicknesses in both the low and middle-income states. The article argues that the development of new skills among the healthcare professionals and increase in personnel have positively impacted on the deterrence, treatment and management of chronic non-communicable illnesses in Vietnam which is one of the developing countries. The rapid urbanization has led to the development of new skills and training of more health workers to deal with these illnesses. This study explores the opinions of the specialists on the openness of primary health care to the increased number and skills of healthcare professionals.
This is a qualitative study conducted in Hanoi in the year 2015. 19 detailed interviews were carried out among health experts in selected community health centres and an inventory of the existing non-communicable diseases at these centres taken while assessing the impact that the new skills and increased number of health workers have had on the handling, managing and controlling of non-communicable sicknesses. The NCD directors at the state, provincial and district levels were interviewed concerning these developments. The interview guides had the six mechanisms of the World Health Organization outline which include proper service distribution by health professionals, the health workforce, accessibility of affordable essential medications, inventions in the health info arrangements, financing as well as governance in the healthcare system. The study used a thematic approach to analyze data from the interviews in this study.
Conclusion and Relevance
The findings showed that there is an upward trend in the development of new skills and the number of healthcare workers hence has led to the reduction of the problem of the non-communicable illnesses in Vietnam. The study also found out that the health staff was not conscious of the state approach for the non-communicable ailments which aimed at training and equipping health professionals so as to eradicate the burden of these illnesses.
Conclusion and Relevance
The authors of this article concluded that although there are varied perceptions on NCD by health professionals, there is an upward increase in the skills and number of healthcare professionals which has reduced the burden of NCD, especially in the developing countries. The relevance of this study is that it can be used to determine the availability of non-communicable disease programs and also assess the position and opinion of the healthcare professionals on the NCD programs that ensure proper service delivery through training health workers new skills in treatment, managing and control of non-communicable sicknesses.
The most significant limitation in this study is that the method that was used to sample the health professionals to be interviewed was random and the population interviewed was not significant enough to represent the whole population of the healthcare workers hence the findings could not have been entirely precise.
Task Shifting For Non-Communicable Sickness Administration In Low And Middle Income Nations
Joshi, R., Alim, M., Kengne, A. P., Jan, S., Maulik, P. K., Peiris, D., & Patel, A. A. (2014). Task shifting for non-communicable disease management in low and middle-income countries–a systematic review. PloS one, 9(8), e103754.
This is a systemic review in which the authors suggest that the possible resolution to the limited health care availability in developing countries is task-shifting. The article states that the increase in the skills and the number of healthcare professionals who deal with non-communicable diseases has been a result of task-shifting whereby there is the training and education of non-physician healthcare workforces to carry out the treatment, management and disease control tasks that were traditionally for physicians. The systemic review consists of the various studies that are involved in task-shifting for the management of non-communicable diseases.
The method used by the authors of this article in the systemic review involved a search approach that comprised the following terms; “task-shifting by non-healthcare workers, communicable disease management, civic health care worker, improved professional skills and number of professionals in NCD, non-communicable disease in developing countries” that was conducted using Medline through Cochrane Library and PubMed. There were two reviewers who separately reviewed these databases and collected the data.
The authors of this article did the search that gave them 7176 articles and used 22 of these to compile the article. Seven studies were of randomized but controlled trials while the remaining 15 were observational studies. The tasks that were performed by the non-physician health workers included screening patients for non-communicable ailments and offering them healthcare. Most of these studies showed improved health outcomes as compared with the usual healthcare due to increased skills and number of health professionals in terms of reduced blood pressure, lowered depression score and increased uptake of drugs. Training, delivery of algorithms and the protocols of screening and curing of these diseases.
Conclusion and Relevance
The authors of this systemic review concluded that task-shifting when accompanied by the restructuring, can ensure an effective and affordable strategy for the improvement of healthcare for patients with non-communicable diseases. The relevance of this article is that the information that was gained can be used to encourage the use of task-shifting to ensure effective treatment, management and control of non-communicable diseases.
The main limitation of this systemic review was the numerous restrictions on the prescribing drugs as well as the availability of the needed medications. The other limitation is that only two studies suggested that task-shifting was cost-effective.
References
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Chaker, L., Falla, A., van der Lee, S. J., Muka, T., Imo, D., Jaspers, L., … & Pazoki, R. (2015). The global impact of non-communicable diseases on macro-economic productivity: a systematic review. European Journal of Epidemiology, 30(5), 357-395.
Ding, D., Lawson, K. D., Kolbe-Alexander, T. L., Finkelstein, E. A., Katzmarzyk, P. T., Van Mechelen, W., … & Lancet Physical Activity Series 2 Executive Committee. (2016). The economic burden of physical inactivity: a global analysis of major non-communicable diseases. The Lancet, 388(10051), 1311-1324.
Duckett, S., & Willcox, S. (2015). The Australian health care system (No. Ed. 5). Oxford University Press.
Fairall, L. R., Folb, N., Timmerman, V., Lombard, C., Steyn, K., Bachmann, M. O., … & Gaziano, T. (2016). Educational outreach with an integrated clinical tool for nurse-led non-communicable chronic disease management in primary care in South Africa: a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial. PLoS medicine, 13(11), e1002178.
Joshi, R., Alim, M., Kengne, A. P., Jan, S., Maulik, P. K., Peiris, D., & Patel, A. A. (2014). Task shifting for non-communicable disease management in low and middle income countries–a systematic review. PloS one, 9(8), e103754.
Kien, V. D., Van Minh, H., Giang, K. B., Ng, N., Nguyen, V., & Eriksson, M. (2018). Views by health professionals on the responsiveness of commune health stations regarding non-communicable diseases in urban Hanoi, Vietnam: a qualitative study. BMC health services research, 18(1), 392.
Leeder, S. R., Jowsey, T., & McNab, J. W. (2018). The experiences of patients and carers living with multimorbid, non-communicable diseases. Australian journal of general practice, 47(1/2), 24.
Muka, T., Imo, D., Jaspers, L., Colpani, V., Chaker, L., van der Lee, S. J., … & Pazoki, R. (2015). The global impact of non-communicable diseases on healthcare spending and national income: a systematic review. European Journal of Epidemiology, 30(4), 251-277.