In 2010, the Institute for Medicine (IOM) published a report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. The report was the result of a project supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and is available from the National Academies Press in Washington, DC (http://www.nap.edu).
The report describes the nursing profession in a time of healthcare reform, given the legislation passed in March 2010, stating that nurses can fill needed roles in care coordination, health promotion, and quality improvement. The IOM recommended the following:
* Nurses practice to the full extent of their education and training.
* Nurses achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression.
Other recommendations related to the role of nurses in redesigning health care in the United States and to effective workforce planning and policy. However, it is the first two recommendations that most affect nursing professional development specialists. Both the idea of nurses' practicing to the full extent of their education and training and nurses' achieving higher levels of education through an improved education system fall within the purview of nursing professional development.
The nursing professional development specialist makes certain that new nurse employees as well as those who have practiced within the employing institution are oriented to their positions and are educated on an ongoing basis throughout their employment. An efficient, effective orientation program leads to reduced turnover. The IOM report recommends residency programs for new graduates, with an emphasis on the need for these residency programs to be outside acute care settings. The pages of the Journal for Nurses in Staff Development (JNSD) are replete with articles describing residency programs that lead to the transition of new graduates into the employment setting and, ultimately, reduced turnover of these new graduates. Not all articles necessarily depict wildly successful programs; some brave authors have presented reports of programs that did not succeed, thus enabling others to avoid their mistakes.
Entrepreneurial nursing professional development specialists can consider marketing their residency programs-tailored to the setting, of course-outside their institutions, to long-term care, home care, and other settings, where the need is great and resources may be few. Or, nursing professional development specialists in nearby healthcare institutions can develop a nurse residency program that can be used by all of the collaborating institutions, thus creating an economical approach and benefitting from the expertise of all involved.
Education focused on nurses' jobs in the institution but also on improving the quality of care will allow nurses to practice to their fullest. JNSD provides readers with contributions that describe how to plan and implement programs to enhance critical thinking and use evidence in nursing practice and similar topics.
The involvement of the professional development specialist as career counselor for nurses as well as liaison to academic settings is bound to improve the education of nurses. The nursing professional development specialist in most institutions does more than simply manage academic affiliations of students; many serve as ad hoc faculty or have developed internship programs for students from affiliating academic institutions.
The IOM report should be welcomed by every nursing professional development specialist. It provides validation for our work and motivation to continue to improve our processes and programs to ensure that the recommendations made by this stellar group of healthcare professionals are implemented. JNSD stands ready to help in this endeavor. Manuscripts submitted to the journal are not only scrutinized for their contribution to the specialty of nursing professional development but now also will be reviewed with an eye toward how well they relate to implementation of the recommendations put forth in the IOM report.
We're in charge of the future of nursing professional development. We've made giant strides with the publication of the new scope and standards for nursing professional development in 2010. The IOM report of that same year underscores that the future of nursing education and practice is here now and nursing professional development specialists have an essential role to play. Are you ready for the challenge?