NPs of the Future Require Changes in the Present

Abstract

PhD, NP T he groundbreaking Institute of Medicine report “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health” was released in October 2010. This consensus report mandates a transformation of nursing at the levels of practice, education, and leadership in order to more fully realize the potential of nurses to help reshape health care. Various implementation actions to realize these objectives have been offered through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Future of Nursing Campaign and the AARP Center to Champion Nursing. The IOM report stresses, “...nurses must be allowed to practice in accordance with their professional training, and the education they receive must better prepare them to deliver patient-centered, equitable, safe, high-quality health care services; engage with physicians and other health care professionals to deliver efficient and effective care; and assume leadership roles in the redesign of the health care system.”...It “will require changes in nursing scopes of practice, advances in the education of nurses across all levels, improvements in the practice of nursing across the continuum of care, transformation in the utilization of nurses across settings, and leadership at all levels so nurses can be deployed effectively and appropriately as partners in the health care team.” Throughout 2011 numerous nursing programs, organizations, and agencies have initiated strategies to implement these mandates for change. Having a clear vision of the nurse of the future is essential before changes in scope of practice and education can be made. These changes will have a great impact on nurse practitioners (NPs) if they continue to believe that the most important component of their role is being a nurse. Thus, NPs must be involved in these decisions about basic changes in nursing. As well as being well-qualified clinicians, NPs must be the leaders of the future. Many things in the IOM report will require the cooperation of other professions, organizations, or agencies. Helping strengthen the scholarship in nursing journals does not. This movement should arise within nursing. As an editor, I would request that one essential change be in the quality of articles submitted to nursing journals. A review of articles in health care journals is an eye-opening experience. My evaluation is that some of what is printed in many journals does not merit publication. At the same time, there seems a dearth of high-quality nursing research in particular, and the best articles are often seen in medical journals or journals of other disciplines, which may have the greatest credibility and perhaps the broadest dissemination of ideas. While it is a laudatory accomplishment that nurses are doing research and getting it published in these venues, this approach leaves nursing journals bereft of some of the articles that would enrich them and increase the scholarship and credibility of nursing journals. Do nurses really value and respect nursing publications? When nurses fail to quote nurse authors or articles in nursing journals in their own writing, I believe it is a reflection of deepseated beliefs that have to change for nursing leadership to develop.