Paper on Empowering Nurses: The Crucial Role of Finance and Accounting Knowledge in Healthcare Practice

Finance and accounting are an essential aspect of nursing practice. Therefore, apart from being practitioners in medicine, nurses should also ensure that they are equipped in finance and accounting and the terms used in practice. This is especially important when one is handling the organization's budgetary requirements and overcoming the different challenges associated with accounting and finance in the course of the practice (Studer, 2010). Through having sufficient information on the different aspects of finance, the organization will achieve better outcomes from the different activities that the organization has to involve itself in. Apart from being medical facilities, healthcare facilities also handle finances. Therefore they need to set up efficient ways to manage the finances at their disposal and achieve their goals. Knowing finance, budgeting, and all the other related aspects will lead to improved outcomes compared to the organizations, and the nurses in them do not have full knowledge of finance and the organization's financial processes (Studer, 2010). The nurses in any healthcare facility have the responsibility of shaping the outcomes of the organization by managing their activities and ensuring that they are within the financial budget of the organization, which will, in turn, mean that they will help the organization overcome the different challenges that they may face as they seek to achieve their goals.

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Nurses also have to be proficient in resource management. They should investigate the effects of resource allocation and utilization in the organization's different departments and how the resource allocation will impact the health outcomes in the organization. The main concern of the healthcare facilities and the nurses is to achieve positive outcomes from their endeavors. Therefore the nurses should ensure that they undertake all the activities needed to achieve positive health outcomes and patient satisfaction through their activities (Arnaert et al., 2018). The nurses are therefore needed to understand the reasoning behind the different business decisions undertaken by the facilities that they work in since having a clear understanding of these decisions will help them participate more in the activities which will result in the achievement of positive outcomes compared to if they do not have any financial idea behind the decisions made.

Furthermore, nurses need to have the financial knowledge to understand the different ways to optimize their budgeting and expenditure in the organization, resulting in the achievement of profits for the organizations that they lead. It is also through knowing finance and accounting that nurses can achieve cost-effectiveness in their activities. Financial knowledge helps the nurses plan the money allocated to them effectively to achieve profits, get quality products, and achieve positive health outcomes from their endeavors (Arnaert et al., 2018). Efficiency factors can also be established by having a finance and accounting background. This is because the nurses will compare the services they have provided against the capital invested in such services' execution. This will help the nurses see if the services provided were efficient since efficiency factors need to weigh the outcomes against the input invested in the projects. Therefore, knowledge in finance and accounting will help improve the running of the facilities that the nurses are in and will change the outcomes of the activities for the better, leading to improved health and outcomes for the people concerned and more profits for the facilities the nurses work in.

Nurses have previously believed that finance and accounting issues should be left to professionals. However, this perception is wrong, considering that the healthcare practice's daily activities are affected by the financial and accounting activities in the facilities in question. This is because financial and accounting knowledge is important in planning for different activities in the organization (Akter et al., 2019). Through knowledge in finance and accounting, the organization is set to achieve positive outcomes since the nurses will be included in achieving success in the financial and accounting sectors. The inclusion of nurses in the organization's financial planning is important since it provides the facilities with real-time information on the processes that take place in the organization and, therefore, contributes to better outcomes from the activities compared to if the nurses' input was not included. However, for the nurses to be included, they need to have extensive nursing knowledge and all the concerned activities.

Additionally, organizations must involve nurses in their financial and accounting activities since they will help in the acquisition process (Akter et al., 2019). acquisition of the organization's equipment requires input from nurses who are actively involved in the running of the facilities. Therefore this will result in better purchases compared to if the organizations do not involve them. However, this will require the nurses to know about finances and accounting, resulting in the acquired equipment and tools being efficient, cost-effective, and within the organizations' budgetary power in question.

Knowing finance and accounting is also important when it comes to the use of resources in the organization. Without financial knowledge, the nurses will likely be careless in their spending, resulting in losses and the organization's hemorrhaging finances. Yet, they need to be efficient in their spending to increase the health interventions they involve themselves in through the possession of financial and accounting knowledge. The organization is likely to experience frugal nurses in their expenditure and activities through the use of the resources sparingly and considering the budgets of the organization before spending or making the organization liable for avoidable expenditures and budgets (Stephan Davis n.d). Therefore, it is common to find nurses with financial knowledge engaging in cost-saving activities such as sharing of equipment that can be shared, re-using some equipment instead of going for new ones, and being careful in using the equipment to increase their Lifespans. Time management is another aspect of finance and accounting that nurses can address by knowing accounting and finance. This is because the nurses are likely to maximize the time available for them to work and, therefore, make timetables to help them see the maximum number of patients per day and provide them with the best outcomes. Having time management skills also helps the organizations that the nurses are in to maximize the time during which the nurses are on shift to serve as many patients as possible during their shifts, therefore giving the organizations value for their money. Therefore, while it may be dismissed, nurses need to have financial knowledge so that their activities produce positive health outcomes and the best financial gain for the organizations they work in.

References

Akter, N., Akter, M. K., & Turale, S. (2019). Barriers to quality of work-life among Bangladeshi nurses: a qualitative study. International Nursing Review, 66(3), 396-403.

Arnaert, A., Mills, J., Bruno, F. S., & Ponzoni, N. (2018). The educational gaps of nurses in entrepreneurial roles: An integrative review. Journal of Professional Nursing, 34(6), 494-501.

Stephan Davis, D. N. P. The Role of Nursing in Healthcare Finance.

Studer, Q. (2010). Do your nurses speak finance? Three healthcare organizations show how they forged a common understanding between clinical and financial leaders for measurable performance improvement. Healthcare Financial Management, 64(6), 80-85.