The Essentials of Genomics and Genetics for Nurses Assignment

The Essentials of Genomics and Genetics for Nurses - Assignment Example While genetics refers to the â€Å"study of individual genes and their impact on relatively rare single gene disorders† genomics includes the â€Å"study of all the genes in the human genome together, including their interactions with each other, the environment, and the influence of other psychosocial and cultural factors† (Consensus panel, 2008, p. 8). Genomics takes into account the environmental factors and clearly demonstrates how these contribute to human health and illness. While genetics focuses on single gene disorders, genomics â€Å"takes a holistic view of genetics† (Ward, 2011, p. 2). Genomics and genetics knowledge, as well as competencies have been proved to be essential prerequisites in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of various chronic diseases. Similarly, with the advancements made in genetic and genomic research genetic testing is now being widely employed for the diagnosis and prognosis of many common diseases like cancer. As such, gen etic and genomic competencies have become integral to the professional nursing practice today. This paper seeks to explore the essentials of genomics and genetics for nurses, and in doing so, it will look at genetic and genomic knowledge, competencies, professional responsibility, assessment and application of genomics and genetics to healthcare. ... For him, the genomic era of health care is a paradigm shift for the nurses and they need to â€Å"consider the collective influence of multiple gene variations and the cumulative effects of all manner of environmental factors on an individual‘s health, risk for disease, response to therapies, even behaviors† (Ward, 2011, p. 4). Usually, nurses need to interact with the patients much more than other health care professionals and therefore it is imperative that they possess ample genomic literacy so as to prepare, administer and explain various genomic applications to the patients. Studies and researches in the realms of genomics have opened new horizons of clinical care to the patients. The applications of genomic discoveries are visible in many areas of the health care industry. As Jenkins, Grady and Collins (2005, p. 98) have observed, â€Å"the applications of genomic discoveries in clinical care are expanding diagnosis, treatment, and prevention at an accelerating pa ce, and that knowledge will continue to improve the health of people throughout the world.† This growing importance of genomics and genetics services has increased the professional responsibility for nurses as well. Genomics has also prompted nurses and other health care professionals to think in terms of the health of the individual rather than his/her disease. Another significant impact of genetics and genomic research is that it has given way for more comprehensive personalized healthcare. Genetic and genomic services facilitate more individualized approaches to treat one’s illness or disease. Lea & Calzone (2010, p. 15) have rightly pointed out that â€Å"the influence of genetic and genomic factors in health and disease is creating opportunities for earlier diagnosis, more effective

The Process of Benchmarking Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Process of Benchmarking - Term Paper Example The purpose of this paper is to examine how the process of benchmarking is important in financial decision making. An online quantitative research study of Jackson Health Care title Nurses downtime 2011 survey elucidates various aspects of benchmarking. This survey offers information that can be used by other organizations for comparison. Factors for comparison outlined in this survey include time spent in indirect care, issues that affect bedside nurse, recommendations on how to increase time spent on patients bedsides, job satisfaction among nurses, and ways to improve job satisfaction. Jackson Health Care has implemented strategies to improve these areas between 2009 and 2011and hence offers a credible basis for comparison. This article informed my understanding of benchmarking in that inequalities in relation to performance gaps are prevalent in healthcare and identifying these variances can help align processes in low performing institutions with those in organizations that perform highly. Subsequently, this article informed my understanding in that benchmarking can either be internal or external. External benchmarking is what is denoted as comparing the processes of an institution with another. Benchmarking involves the creation of specific objectives that ought to be achieved in a healthcare organization to achieve high levels of performance. In my organization, benchmarking can be used to assess the existing strategies under implementation and as mentioned earlier, compare them with those in other similar organizations. During this process, financial data relating to other organizations are collected and analyzed. It is only through this process that what needs to be done to improve performance in terms of finances can be identified and achieved in my organization. As Baker and Baker (2014) points out, "Benchmarking is used for opportunity assessment" (p. 220). In other words, benchmarking can help my organization to identify opportunities and