This post is contributed by Dr. Wendy Marks

The Nurse Manifest project is a collective work in progress. I encourage nurses around the globe to join the cause and become social activists working towards partnership and emancipation in healthcare practice, education, research and policy.

Reflecting upon the achievements in the nursing profession for 2014, I consider the Manifesto’s Mission:

A Call to Conscience and Action

• To raise awareness
• To inspire action
• To open discussion of issues that are vital to nursing and health care around the globe.

2014 was a year of nurses raising their awareness of issues vital to nursing and healthcare around the globe. From Ebola, to poverty and violence, nurses are at the frontlines addressing personal and public health concerns around the world.

2014 saw expanding roles of nurses with the abolition of practice barriers for Advanced Practice Nurses to meet growing healthcare demands in many States.

The American Nurses Association is a great place to find resources for advancing the profession http://www.nursingworld.org. One great initiative is from the Bedside to the Board Room; where staff nurses are educated to create policy change.

I encourage nurses to read, reflect upon and utilize the ideas from the articles, books and doctoral dissertations citing the project https://nursemanifest.com/resources/.

Change happens when we reflect and transform of values, beliefs and actions. As we close 2014 and open 2015, I encourage nurses around the globe to see and say what nursing is and can be. Create the world you want to live in.

As nurse manifestors we are looking for new thought, bravery, compassion, and alchemy.

The poem Not Here by Rumi illuminates our work and mission:

Not Here

There’s courage involved if you want to become truth.
There is a broken-open place in a lover.
Where are those qualities of bravery and sharp compassion in this group?
What’s the use of old and frozen thought?
I want a howling hurt.  This is not a treasury where gold is stored; this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that can heat up and change.  Lukewarm won’t do.
Half-hearted holding back, well-enough getting by?
Not here.

— From Soul of Rumi by Coleman Barks

Go forth nurses in 2015 and bring peace, comfort, care, love and alchemy!