One Take on the Top 10 Issues Facing Nursing

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

So I’ve been in Dallas at the Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) biennial meeting. The venue is the Gaylord Texan, a large, climate-controlled resort under a glass dome—as you leave your building and walk “outside,” you’re really not. Don’t believe the flowing stream or flowers or gardens (all real) along the walkways, or the Longhorn steer (fake) behind a fence that stands outside my building—you’re still inside. And to make it even more surreal, there are Christmas holiday decorations everywhere, including a gingerbread house the size of a small hotel room. It will be strange to step back in time to Halloween when I get back home.

A daunting list. There are a few thousand people here for the meeting, way too many sessions to choose from (20 different topics for each concurrent session period), plus rows of posters and exhibit booths. And of course, great networking. One lively session I attended was standing room only—and that’s after any floor space had been occupied by people sitting cross-legged. It was a discussion of the top 10 issues facing nursing, led by STTI’s publications director Renee Wilmeth (she’s not a nurse, which probably makes her less biased). The issues were compiled from responses provided by 30 nursing leaders, and were presented in question form:

  1. Is evidence-based practice (EBP) helpful or harmful? (Amazing how many interpretations there were of EBP, some of them—as I know from our […]