A new hashtag: #FutureofNursing2030

In 2010, a committee of the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine), released a report to lay out a vision for nursing for the coming decade. That decade is now almost over. The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health is the most viewed and most downloaded report of the National Academies. On March 20 in Washington, D.C., Victor Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine, announced an impending follow-up report for the next ten years: The Future of Nursing: 2020-2030.

Outcomes, not page views, are what matters.

Noting that “success is measured by outcomes and impact, and not by downloads and page views,” Dzau cited a few of the accomplishments that arose from the 2010 report:

  • removing barriers that limited NP practice (21 states and the District of Columbia allow for full practice authority)
  • doubling the number of nurses with doctoral degrees
  • increasing the diversity of nursing students

But Dzau also noted that more needs to be done in these areas, and he emphasized the need for better data about the nursing workforce. The new report will be a consensus study that seeks to chart a new path for nursing “to help our nation create a culture of health, reduce health disparities, and improve the health and well-being of the US population in the 21st century.”

Scaling up nurse-led or nurse-involved models of care.

With renewed sponsorship from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the new committee, chaired by Mary Wakefield and David Williams, will examine the initiative’s accomplishments so far with an eye to how they can be sustained in the face of current and future trends.

A background report, Activating Nursing to Address Unmet Needs in the 21st Century, by Patricia Pittman of George Washington University was released on March 12 in concert with this new initiative). This report summarizes two very different models of nursing that run through the history of the profession; describes “the deteriorating epidemiological” situation in the United States (“There is growing recognition that medical care alone is insufficient to address the . . . health problems of today’s world”); and argues that scaling up current “nurse-led or nurse-involved” models of care will be essential as care delivery continues to be transformed. (Look for a detailed summary of this report in an upcoming issue of AJN.)

Committees and meetings have real world effects.

While some nurses may roll their eyes at another committee and another report, one can’t argue with the advances that have come as a result of the earlier Future of Nursing initiative. While NPs have seen significant gains in their ability to practice independently, nurses in acute care and community health settings have seen positive changes as well:

  • Direct care nurses are leading quality and safety initiatives in acute care and contributing to new technology innovations.
  • More nurses are moving into leadership positions and changing organizational culture to advance nursing.
  • Nurses in community health and primary care practices are doing more collaborative care management and coordination.

‘To seek out the baseline causes of illness and misery.’

Paul Kuehnert, a nurse and a vice president of the RWJF, emphasized that the RWJF is “all in with nursing” and that “as the largest and most trusted profession, nursing has unique opportunity and responsibility to improve the nation’s health.” He quoted Lillian Wald, the nurse who founded the public health movement at the beginning of the 19th century:

“The call to a nurse is not only to bedside care of the sick but to seek out the baseline causes of illness and misery.”

In an editorial in AJN in September 2009, Donna Shalala (now a representative from Florida in the United States Congress ) and Linda Burnes Bolton, the cochairs of the original Future of Nursing committee, wrote,

“Our nation’s leaders must not squander the opportunity to benefit from the insight and experience of nurses as they tackle the daunting task of determining who pays for and delivers health care services.”

That sentiment still applies.