“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which became Public Law 111-148, is probably the most significant legislation affecting healthcare since the passage of the Social Security Act of 1965. . . . The law paved way for over 32 Million uninsured Americans to access acute care, primary care, preventive care, home care, and long-term and palliative care (Web, J. A & Marshal, D. R. 2010). The challenge in the implementation is compounded by the chronic shortage of nursing and other health care professionals to take care of the growing need for health care.
Owing to its large number of professionals, (over 3 million), nursing has a key role in the achievement of affordable care act, however this can only be achieved once the identified challenges are addressed. These challenges includes allowing nurses to practice to the full extent of their training and education with focus mainly on advanced practice nurses, create a seamless nurse education system, nurse involvement as full partners in health care and implementing a better workforce planning and policy making (IOM, 2010) …show more content…
Health education remain an effective tool in the hands of the nurse to address the current health care cost associated with preventable illness and diseases. For example, Today, approximately 1 in 3 adults (34.0%) and 1 in 6 children and adolescents (16.2%) are obese (Healthy People 2020). This predispose the individual to cardiac diseases, stroke, and diabetes among other. Health education and scheduling a working implementation plan can go a long way in resolving the obesity challenge. Some of these interventions includes, scheduled exercises and adopting a healthy diet which do not require much of a cost to implement. The nurse need to include disease prevention on the patient education during hospital stay and on discharge education