Current nursing practice: challenges and successes

The changing healthcare environment is placing greater demands on all healthcare service sectors, including nursing practice. Nurses are professionally engaged in caring for human beings and to pursue nursing as their profession actively (Merriam Webster Dictionary 2011). However, every year, changes in the healthcare environment accelerate, opportunities become harder to predict, competitors emerge at an ever-increasing pace and partnering with internal and external customers becomes essential for success. It is thus inevitable that the pace of changes in nursing practice will continue to increase, and the level of complexity and interdependence in practice will continue to grow (Boss & Sims 2008, Politis 2006). These new practices and the things nurses will focus on will become their reality, and the actions they will perform will create their reality (Hall & Hammond, Reed 2007).Web of Scienc

Children, work and 'child labour' : changing responses to the employment of children

Working children and young people occupy a relatively weak and easily exploitable position in work relations and in the labour market. As a social group, they share this problem with various other structurally- disadvantaged social groups in society (examples are women, e!liiiic minorities or migrants and the disabled). However, they are the only-one among such groups whose exploitation is generally addressed by attempts to remove them completely from the labour market, rather-17 than by efforts to improve the terms and conditions under which they work. What is the basis for treating the 'child labour~,:p~oblem in such a different way: i.e. by demanding special laws and regulations excluding this category of persons from access to employment, rather than by demanding the abolition of discrimination against them

Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme in the Context of the Health MDGS – An Empirical Evaluation Using Propensity Score Matching

In 2003 the Government of Ghana established a National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) to improve health care access for Ghanaians and eventually replace the cash-and-carry system. This study evaluates the NHIS to determine whether it is fulfilling its purpose in the context of the Millennium Development Goals #4 and #5 which deal with the health of women and children. We use Propensity Score Matching techniques to balance the relevant background characteristics in our survey data and compare health outcomes of recent mothers who are enrolled in the NHIS with those who are not. Our findings suggest that NHIS women are more likely to receive prenatal care, deliver at a hospital, have their deliveries attended by trained health professionals, and experience less birth complications. We conclude that NHIS is an effective tool for increasing health care access, and improving health outcomes