Yvonne O'Sullivan
Health Care Quality Strategy for Scotland Essay January 2013
Health Care Quality Strategy for Scotland Essay January 2013
Scotland is a small country comprising of 5.2 million inhabitants, with 22.6% of its population aged 60 or above. Scotland has been distinguished among prosperous western societies for its poor health, with statistics on average more analogous to eastern European countries than with those of Western Europe. Additionally, Scotland has been differentiated within the UK for having a higher degree of mortality than can be justified by its proportion of deprivation. The reasons why Scotland’s health is significantly poorer than other countries is yet to be discovered, however correlations have been made with environmental, financial, behavioural and cultural indicators of population health risks which exist in Scotland (Gordon, Fischer and Stockton 2010). The health care quality strategy has been inaugurated to improve health and well-being for the Scottish people and it provides a framework to guide the NHS professionals who supply healthcare services to the Scottish people to work with the public toward a collective ambition. The NHS has been critisised as a health care system that is multifarious and fragmented—one in need of enhancement (Finkelman and Kenner 2007). Incidentally, the challenges that face the future of nursing will also have substantial repercussions for the delivery of sustainable high quality healthcare; this is compounded by the aging demographic often with numerous and long term illnesses, as well as the presence of health inequalities and mounting expectation all in the context of diminishing monetary funds, dictate that we must construct a strategy that focuses on individual patients rather than the collective and combine our efforts to address these challenges and turn them into opportunities (NHS Scotland 2011). The Quality Strategy