A landmark report on the FUTURE OF NURSING was issued last fall by the Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Foundation. There are four major recommendations:
- Nurses should practice to the full extent of their education and training.
- Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an
improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression. - Nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other health care professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States.
- Effective workforce planning and policy making require better data collection and information infrastructure.
Each of these recommendations are framed in language that is well suited to public policy-making, but if we read these recommendations from a “Nurse Manifest” lens, they take on even greater importance! Take, for example, the idea of “full extent of [our] education and training.” If nursing education reaches the ideals that we have set forth in the “Manifesto” where education is concerned, all of health care could be radically re-invented!
I believe that more nurses than we imagine have ideals about nursing that are very similar to the values that we described on the initial NurseManifest.com web site. Let’s brainstorm ways we can better connect with the “Future of Nursing” initiatives going on all around the U.S., and keep these values in the forefront!
NurseManifest 