Target Population Assumptions …show more content…
Medical students must complete one to three years of residency to practice medicine in the United States ("Medicine," n.d.). Nurses provide much of the care that patients receive, which increases the chance of medical errors being made based upon the time spent at the bedside. Nurses are allowed to practice without such additional training. All though not mandated, many state boards of nursing and nursing schools are recommending such post graduate programs. Providing such programs to better equip nurses for acute patient care would only serve to provide better quality and safe care and therefore improving some legal ramifications for health care facilities by decreasing medical errors. Medical residency programs are mandated and regulated; however, they are also funded as a result of pressure from the American Medical Association. Perhaps if the American Nurse Association were to apply pressure to federal and state governing authorities, nurse residency programs would become mandated and funded as well. However, healthcare is highly regulated by laws and adding more regulations causes other issues for the facilities to handle. One issue of mandating nurse residency programs without the funding to back such programs is that some facilities may stop hiring new graduate nurses related to the cost of the extra training period. As previously mentioned there are some grants available through ACA, but these grants are usually provided to schools of nursing. Perhaps a contract between facility and employee would become necessary to ensure the facility retains the employee after completion of training for an agreed upon length of time. This contract would provide protection to the facility and the