U S Nursing Workforce

The Future of the Nursing Workforce in the United States: Data, Trends and Implications provides a timely, comprehensive, and integrated body of data supported by rich discussion of the forces shaping the nursing workforce in the US. Using plain, jargon free language, the book identifies and describes the key changes in the current nursing workforce and provide insights about what is likely to develop in the future. The Future of the Nursing Workforce offers an in-depth discussion of specific policy options to help employers, educators, and policymakers design and implement actions aimed at strengthening the current and future RN workforce. The only book of its kind, this renowned author team presents extensive data, exhibits and tables on the nurse labor market, how the composition of the workforce is evolving, changes occurring in the work environment where nurses practice their profession, and on the publics opinion of the nursing profession.

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.

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.

Nurses make up the largest segment of the health care profession, with 3 million registered nurses in the United States. Nurses work in a wide variety of settings, including hospitals, public health centers, schools, and homes, and provide a continuum of services, including direct patient care, health promotion, patient education, and coordination of care. They serve in leadership roles, are researchers, and work to improve health care policy. As the health care system undergoes transformation due in part to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the nursing profession is making a wide-reaching impact by providing and affecting quality, patient-centered, accessible, and affordable care. In 2010, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released the report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, which made a series of recommendations pertaining to roles for nurses in the new health care landscape. This current report assesses progress made by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/AARP Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action and others in implementing the recommendations from the 2010 report and identifies areas that should be emphasized over the next 5 years to make further progress toward these goals.

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

Understanding the supply, distribution, and educational pipeline of nurses is key to designing programs and policies that will ensure access to care and an effective health care system. This book analyzes data from a variety of sources to present recent trends and the current status of the registered nurse (RN) and licensed practical nurse (LPN) workforces. This book also provides additional information on data and methodology for analysis of the nurse supply, including information on the calculation of standard errors, tests of significance for change over time, and use of the data for rural-urban analysis.

Hospitals and nursing homes are responding to changes in the health care system by modifying staffing levels and the mix of nursing personnel. But do these changes endanger the quality of patient care? Do nursing staff suffer increased rates of injury, illness, or stress because of changing workplace demands? These questions are addressed in Nursing Staff in Hospitals and Nursing Homes, a thorough and authoritative look at today's health care system that also takes a long-term view of staffing needs for nursing as the nation moves into the next century. The committee draws fundamental conclusions about the evolving role of nurses in hospitals and nursing homes and presents recommendations about staffing decisions, nursing training, measurement of quality, reimbursement, and other areas. The volume also discusses work-related injuries, violence toward and abuse of nursing staffs, and stress among nursing personnelâ€"and examines whether these problems are related to staffing levels. Included is a readable overview of the underlying trends in health care that have given rise to urgent questions about nurse staffing: population changes, budget pressures, and the introduction of new technologies. Nursing Staff in Hospitals and Nursing Homes provides a straightforward examination of complex and sensitive issues surround the role and value of nursing on our health care system.

This comprehensive book organizes the components of quality and safety outcomes, within a framework developed by expert nurses. Such a framework is missing in existing books on quality and safety in health care, and the concepts of nursing and organizational outcomes are often overlooked. This book fills this gap by exploring and expanding the various features of the Quality Health Outcomes Model (QHOM) and its four main concepts of System, Client, Interventions, and Outcomes. Using a broad and comprehensive approach, the authors identify the most current empirical evidence and concepts in the nursing field to provide an up-to-date understanding of the QHOM’s four concepts and their interrelations. New concepts include (a) systems concepts of turbulence and complexity of workflow and use of the electronic health record to support clinical workflow; (b) client concepts of social determinants of health, health literacy, and chronicity; (c) intervention concepts of interprofessional practice, nursing care processes including unfinished care, and care coordination; (d) outcome concepts related to nursing and the organization in addition to patient outcomes that includes the patients’ experience. The ideas, approaches, and evidence are provided by a team of experienced researchers, practitioners, and leaders. The author team presents an updated, state-of-art view of how system, client, and interventions affect client, nurse, and organizational outcomes. This book will appeal to researchers, clinicians, and researchers interested in healthcare quality and in particular nurses and nursing students in administration, research, and practice.