Published by: Shiela Burke on 5/12/2011 10:46:48 AM
Changes under way in the delivery and culture of U.S. health care aim to create a system that will provide seamless, accessible, affordable and equitable quality care for all Americans. While nurses have always been dedicated to such care, they have faced challenges that often kept them from fully utilizing their expertise and experience. Those challenges must be tackled for us to successfully transform our health care system.
This week marks National Nurses Week, a time to celebrate nurses’ work and the critical roles they play. The care nurses provide includes more than on a hospital floor or at the bedside of a nursing home resident. The nation’s 3.1 million nurses are on duty in schools, workplaces and battlefields. They can also be a source for the leadership we need to improve care at the bedside and across the health care system. The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action is working to ensure that nurses are integrally involved in health care change.
Campaign for Action, organized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in collaboration with AARP, launched in November 2010 following the release of the landmark Institute of Medicine report “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.” The campaign is moving forward at the national, state and local levels, building on both the report’s recommendations and the long-time efforts of nurse leaders and nursing organizations.
The objectives of Campaign for Action include:
• strengthening nurse education and training;
• enabling nurses to practice to the full extent of their education and training;
• advancing interprofessional collaboration to ensure coordinated and improved patient care;
• expanding leadership ranks to ensure that nurses have a voice on management teams, in boardrooms and during policy debates; and
• improving health care workforce data collection to better assess and project workforce requirements.
Already, the campaign is engaged with Action Coalitions in fifteen communities throughout the country that reflect a broad-based approach to engaging diverse stakeholders. Action Coalitions contribute to the overall Campaign for Action by developing and disseminating best practices in the five objective areas. Action Coalitions are on the ground in California, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Virginia and Florida. These long-term alliances are drawing partners from the private and public sectors, from nurses and non-nursing leaders and tackling issues that directly affect their states.
Addressing some of nursing’s key challenges will have broad benefits given the increasingly interdependent roles of health care providers. But Campaign for Action makes clear that nurses must be front and center as the country strives for comprehensive and lasting improvements in health care to ensure that people get care they need when they need it.
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Sheila Burke, B.S.N., M.P.A.
Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action