Who Is Nursing Them It Is Us

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.

This book explores the impacts of HIV/AIDS and neoliberal globalization on the occupational health of public sector hospital nurses in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The story of South African public sector nurses provides multiple perspectives on the HIV/AIDS epidemic-for a workforce that played a role in the struggle against apartheid, women who deal with the burden of HIV/AIDS care at work and in the community, and a constituency of the new South African democracy that is working on the frontlines of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Through case studies of three provincial hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal, set against a historical backdrop, this book tells the story of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the post-apartheid period.

Nursing, like other health-related professions, is information-inten sive. The quality of care a patient receives is based on the soundness of judgment exercised by the health care team. Underlying sound judg ment is up-to-date information. Unless nurses have access to accurate and pertinent information, the care being rendered will not be of the highest standard. What is required is not necessarily more rapid and efficient informa tion services. Modern technology can process immense amounts of data in the blink of an eye. What we in the health professions need are information systems that are more intelligent, systems that can inte grate information from many sources, systems that analyze and syn thesize information and display it so that it may be applied directly in patient care-in other words, information that answers a question or even gives practical advice. In order to accomplish such objectives, work is needed to establish the scientific and theoretical basis for the use of computing and infor mation systems by health professionals. This is the research com ponent. In addition, there is the need for continued development and evaluation of practical information systems.

Most five-year-olds want to be firefighters, astronauts, doctors, nurses, police officers, chefs, animal doctors, but how many will actually stick to their childhood "dream"? At age five Milicent McCalla made a decision to become a nurse upon watching the "angel" nurse in the white uniform and cap care for her father in the hospital after a serious accident. As the nurse turned to leave the room, she touched Milicent on the head, and Milicent said in childlike innocence, "I am going to be a nurse like you." The nurse then said something that stuck with Milicent throughout her schooling: "You can become anything you wish as long as you study hard and keep your wishes alive." Milicent never wavered from accomplishing that dream, and after working as a registered nurse for thirty-four years in Jamaica, her native country, Canada, and the United States, she retired from a career specializing in oncology and medical-surgical nursing. With a flair for writing and humor, Milicent shares stories of her childhood, her schooling, her career, her father's wise sayings, and her faith in God in So This Is Nursing. To Milicent, caring for the sick and dying has always been her calling. And with God's help, she has done it to the best of her ability.

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Positioned within a public policy and public management context, The Modernization of the Nursing Workforce explores how change in public policy on the reform of the health service feeds through to impact upon the management and structure of the healthcare workforce.