Taking Action Top 10 Priorities To Promote Health Equity And Well Being In Nursing

The crucible of the global pandemic, racial injustice, and a crippling nursing shortage has sparked increasing calls for nursing to address its own problems from inequity to structural racism. In response, authors Susan B. Hassmiller and Gaea A. Daniel enlisted nearly 70 national and international nursing leaders to tackle the most pressing issues confronting the profession. Taking Action: Top 10 Priorities to Promote Health Equity and Well-Being in Nursing spotlights 10 critical themes through data, essays, discussion points, and action items, equipping readers to move beyond conversation to action.

The decade ahead will test the nation's nearly 4 million nurses in new and complex ways. Nurses live and work at the intersection of health, education, and communities. Nurses work in a wide array of settings and practice at a range of professional levels. They are often the first and most frequent line of contact with people of all backgrounds and experiences seeking care and they represent the largest of the health care professions. A nation cannot fully thrive until everyone - no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they make - can live their healthiest possible life, and helping people live their healthiest life is and has always been the essential role of nurses. Nurses have a critical role to play in achieving the goal of health equity, but they need robust education, supportive work environments, and autonomy. Accordingly, at the request of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, on behalf of the National Academy of Medicine, an ad hoc committee under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conducted a study aimed at envisioning and charting a path forward for the nursing profession to help reduce inequities in people's ability to achieve their full health potential. The ultimate goal is the achievement of health equity in the United States built on strengthened nursing capacity and expertise. By leveraging these attributes, nursing will help to create and contribute comprehensively to equitable public health and health care systems that are designed to work for everyone. The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity explores how nurses can work to reduce health disparities and promote equity, while keeping costs at bay, utilizing technology, and maintaining patient and family-focused care into 2030. This work builds on the foundation set out by The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health (2011) report.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

" This is the first research-based book to confront workplace issues facing nurses who have disabilities. It not only examines in depth their experiences, roadblocks to successful employment, and misperceptions surrounding them, but also provides viable solutions for creating positive attitudes towards them and a welcoming work environment that fosters hiring and retention. From the perspectives and actual voices of nurses with disabilities, nurse leaders, nurse administrators, and patients, the book identifies nurses with disabilities (including sensory, musculoskeletal, emotional, and mental health issues), discusses why they choose to leave nursing or hide their disabilities, and analyzes how their disabilities may influence career choices. "

The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.

Real-life nurse stories discuss appropriate for nurses in practice and use as a textbook. end-of-life communication experiences, an ethical practice question, and best evidence for end-of-life discussion in nursing practice. Questions for reflection and continued discussion are at the end of each chapter. Chapters include Knowing What to Say and When to Say It, Responding to Patient and Family Wishes and Hopes, Responding to Conflict, Advocating: When Nurses Need to Take Action, Responding to Cultural Needs in End-of-Life Care, Challenges in End-of-Life Communication.

"Nurses are in charge of the patients and their families throughout the hospital and health system experience. They assist patients through illness to achieve higher levels of health. They coordinate the care throughout the patients' experiences with the healthcare system. Nurses are the leaders of patient care at the bedside and beyond. It is important that as clinical leaders, nurses have the most accurate, most up-to-date, and evidence-based information available so that they can always do the right thing. The PEACE model develops clinical nurses as leaders in care of both patients and their families. Clinical nurses, those at the point of care, have embraced this model for guiding their practice. The PEACE model helps clinical nurses solve challenging problems through a rigorous evidence-based practice process-from problem identification to evaluation and dissemination. The crux of the PEACE model is the mnemonic that simplifies the evidence-based practice (EBP) process for clinical nurses. The PEACE model is used across New York-Presbyterian (NYP), one of the nation's most comprehensive academic healthcare delivery systems. NYP is composed of 10 hospitals in New York and employs more than 11,000 nurses across the enterprise. One striking advantage of the model is that it emerged from the work of clinical nurses who were struggling to find a way to remember and apply the components of other EBP models. The mnemonic PEACE promotes understanding and application by clinical nurses, providing a way to easily remember the EBP component stages. The uniqueness of the PEACE model is its simplicity. This relevance leads to continued application in day-to-day nursing practice. As we strive for peace at many levels of our lives and work, the mnemonic is easy to remember. The PEACE model may be adapted to any setting where nurses practice"--

Social justice is a matter of life and death. It affects the way people live, their consequent chance of illness, and their risk of premature death. We watch in wonder as life expectancy and good health continue to increase in parts of the world and in alarm as they fail to improve in others.