Creating Responsive Solutions to Healthcare Change, edited by Cynthia S. McCullough. Indianapolis, Center Nursing Press (Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing), 2001. 264 pages, softcover, $29.95.
This insightful text has 11 chapters that intensely examine the major variables that are stimulating change in health care delivery. These are (1) trends in health care change, (2) population-based planning, (3) computer-based scenario modeling, (4) selecting the care delivery model, (5) the effect of technology on facility planning, (6) healing environments, (7) sustainable design, (8) responsive master facility planning, (9) developing implementation strategies, (10) putting it all together: a case study, and (11) health care delivery in the future. A multidisciplinary staff of 13 contributors enables a perceptive and erudite vision of the future impelled by the vast changes in every aspect of formulating new approaches to health care.
The writers come from wide and deep experiences in health care and their respective abilities to adjust to what is transpiring. Their clear impressions of the future are portrayed. Each chapter enables readers to vindicate their personal conceptions. It is always worthwhile to widen one's horizons with concepts that cannot be ignored. Indirectly the text hints at what type of preparation will be needed to survive and whether practitioners of any type will survive without the richer preparation inherent in advanced education. This concept is easily grasped in the analysis of the various megatrends in health care. The discussion of the sophisticated technology movement underway enhances the need for sophisticated users of these scientific expansions. Just suppose what the current robotic pharmacist development, now being used and tested, can do as a model of what may happen to various types of clinicians.
This clear and stimulating volume should cause nurses at all levels of preparation to seriously consider what the future implications are for every nurse and how each must act in individual conformity to adjust to the future as well as maintain their present career.