| Learning Objective #1: Obtain a simulation program designed to model the way nurses distribute scarce resources among a cohort of patients when demands and resources are uncertain. | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Help students use the simulation program, collect and analyze data, and help students' evaluate their allocation choices. |
Purpose: Describe, demonstrate, and distribute a simulation program integrating forced clinical decision making, under uncertainty, when allocating scarce resources to cohorts of clients and incorporating evidence based, case studies.
Background: Healthcare organizations address anticipated revenue inadequacies and financial risks in managed care, DRGs, and capitation, through resource constraining financial and structural strategies. Nurses then make clinical AND financial decisions affecting service quantity and quality for cohorts of clients’ not just individual clients. Simulating such processes help faculty and students evaluate decisions affecting cohorts, better preparing students for workplace challenges, and helping them evaluate their choices in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, and compassion.
Approach: The author developed and used computer simulations of nurses’ making forced choices in distributing resources to clients when service demands exceeded resources. Faculty, undergraduate, and graduate nursing students participated in simulation design and development, using it to illustrate economic scarcity, supply and demand, resource allocation strategies, ethics, and how choices benefiting one client affect other clients. Faculty and students reviewed decision-making choices under uncertainty in a non-threatening and supportive context.
Major Points & Rationale: Decreasing healthcare revenues and increasing service demands, require new strategies to prepare nurses for the ethical, legal, and financial conflicts in the workplace. Nurses who understand the financial, managerial, and clinical implications of changing finance mechanisms will better understand and address healthcare workplace and policy issues.
Conclusions: This report provides tools to collect and analyze information on student nurses’ allocations of resources to cohorts of clients. Free distribution of the program and source code will enable attendees to use and improve on the program, help students prepare for their professional roles, and help faculty and nursing leaders address major challenges to nursing education – better preparing nurses to function in resource constrained environments.
See more of Informatics and Technology in Nursing
See more of The 17th International Nursing Research Congress Focusing on Evidence-Based Practice (19-22 July 2006)