The Nursing Report That Didn’t Just ‘Sit on a Shelf’

Joyce Pulcini is director of the master’s programs and of community and global initiatives at the George Washington University School of Nursing in Washington, DC. She also is the contributing editor for AJN’s Policy and Politics column.

From otisarchives4, via Flickr From otisarchives4, via Flickr

IOM speakers and panel focus on a major report’s increasingly visible real world effects—while emphasizing diversity and the roles of every type of nurse at every level.

On December 11, I attended the Institute of Medicine (IOM) event celebrating the three-year anniversary of the The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health report, released in 2010. The event at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, highlighted the impact of the report so far and discussed the continued work of the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action in terms of priorities for the nursing profession.

Some highlights:

Best Care at Lower Cost: New IOM Report Spotlights Crucial Role of Nurses

By Mary D. Naylor, PhD, FAAN, RN. Dr. Naylor is the Marian S. Ware Professor in Gerontology and director of the NewCourtland Center for Transitions and Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She is also the National Program Director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program, Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative, aimed at generating, disseminating, and translating research to understand how nurses contribute to quality patient care. She was appointed to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission in 2010. 

Building on the Future of Nursing report’s call for nurses to fully engage with fellow health care professionals, a new report from the Institute of Medicine, Best Care at Lower Cost, calls on nurses and others in the health care system to apply emerging tools, technologies, and approaches to yield lower costs and better health outcomes. I had the great fortune to serve as a member of the study committee.

The complexity problem. The report couldn’t be more timely or relevant, particularly for nurses and the patients they serve, given the complexity of the current health care system. Administrative and workflow inefficiencies limit hospital nurses from spending more than about 30% of their time on direct patient care. With increasing specialization, modern medicine now includes nurses in more than 50 specialties. To successfully coordinate a patient’s care, nurses need to communicate and collaborate with patients, family caregivers, physicians, pharmacists, social workers, and many other team members.

The complexity […]

2016-11-21T13:09:23-05:00September 6th, 2012|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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