Blog
May 16, 2012
People trust nurses. In fact they consistently outrank other professions in Gallup's annual honesty and ethics survey. This level of trust is one among many reasons why the Nurse Family Partnership consistently improves the lives of children and their families. A recent New York Times Fixes blog profiles this long-running program (nearly 40 years), in which registered nurses (RNs), usually with baccalaureate degrees, are sent into the homes of at-risk, low income, first-time mothers for 64 planned visits through pregnancy and over the child’s first two years. The goal of the program is to improve the health, well-being and self-sufficiency of low-income, first-time mothers – with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes for their children. This collaborative program supports partnerships between nurses, other health care professionals and consumers.
The Fixes blog focuses on innovative, evidence-based solutions to social issues and the author, David Bornstein, applauds the wide ranging impact of and evidence behind the Nurse Family Partnership. He also underscores the program’s potential for broader impact, noting that the Affordable Care Act includes $1.5 billion for states use in expanding the Nurse Family Partnership and other similar programs.
The Institute of Medicine agrees, in fact it profiled the Nurse Family Partnership in its report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, noting its potential for high value, cost-effective outcomes.
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May 9, 2012
Happy National Nurses Week! The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has a proud history of supporting nurses and nurse leadership, so this week, the RWJF Human Capital Blog will feature posts by nurses, including leaders from some of our nursing programs. Check back each day to see what they have to say. This post is by Susan Bakewell-Sachs, PhD, RN, PNP-BC, interim provost for The College of New Jersey, and program director of the New Jersey Nursing Initiative, a project of RWJF and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
The American Nurses Association theme for National Nurses Week 2012 is “Nurses: Advocating, Leading, Caring.” It emphasizes critical areas of focus for professional nursing in New Jersey and the nation that align well with the 2010 Institute of Medicine report entitled Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. National Nurses Week is an opportune time to highlight nurses and nursing and the scientifically proven contributions that our profession makes to improve health and patient care.
It is also a good time to talk about what we still need to make happen to improve health and health care. For one thing, we must continue to push for more registered nurses to earn advanced (masters and doctoral) degrees. This is essential for nursing practice, education and research. We need many more advanced practice nurses for primary and specialized care, more nurse educators to prepare nurses for the future, and more nurse scientists to continue to build the evidence for our practice and teaching.
One of the wonderful aspects of a nursing career is that nurses can have multiple careers within it and can be clinicians,
teachers and researchers. We need to advocate for a better educated profession with a higher proportion of nurses having baccalaureate and higher degrees as well as advocate for healthier lifestyle opportunities for our society and for a better health care system for those we care for.
We must lead for a better future. Nurses should seek to lead, wherever they are, throughout their careers. Leading requires gaining specific and broad knowledge, taking a public position, being willing to find solutions and engaging in difficult dialogue when necessary. It also requires us to be willing to speak up inside and outside of nursing, with members of other disciplines.
Leaders learn to lead. Many current nurse leaders are in the latter phase of their careers so we must focus on developing our future leaders – our students, staff nurses, advanced practice nurses, faculty, nurse managers, public health nurses and others who we can mentor and encourage as emerging leaders. If each of us commits to being a mentor and seeks out opportunities to help develop others, we will be helping to ensure that nurses will be visible leaders at the table.
I am very proud that we have many nursing leaders in New Jersey and that, through programs like the New Jersey Nursing Initiative and the New Jersey Action Coalition, many of those leaders are actively working to: prepare future nurses, nurse faculty and nurse scientists; build better partnerships in nursing education and between academe and practice; improve nursing education; and develop leaders and improve health and health care. We are also fortunate to have the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Johnson & Johnson in New Jersey, actively supporting and putting a spotlight on nursing and health care.
In New Jersey, nurses are advocating, leading and caring.
The New Jersey Nursing Initiative is a multi-year, $30 million project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Foundation, working to transform nursing education in the state. Its goal is to ensure that New Jersey has the well prepared, diverse nurse faculty it needs to educate nurses to meet the demand for health and health care in the 21st century. Learn more.
Reproduced with permission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.
May 8, 2012
Every Friday, in a small classroom at the Montana State University (MSU) College of Nursing, American Indian students fill out a form on their academic progress and describe their plan to prepare for exams. They also talk about what’s going on at home because family and participating in cultural ceremonies play significant roles in their daily lives.
“To me, I picture your heart [as] a magnet and our students sense a pull back to the reservations,” said Twila Old Coyote, the Assistant Director for the Caring for Our Own Program (COOP) at the college. “I think the students have a hard time and there’s a lot of guilt leaving their families.”
One of the challenges unique to American Indian students is that those who leave their reservation to pursue a nursing degree are often leaders at home. With their departure, families can experience a sense of loss and students feel bound to return to the reservation, often prolonging graduation. This can make tracking graduation rates difficult. One student, reports Old Coyote, took ten years to graduate; she was performing double duty, caring for her father who was diagnosed with diabetes.
MSU’s COOP program, which began in 1997, focuses on providing American Indian students with additional support as they pursue a bachelors of science degree in nursing or master’s in nursing degree. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Administration (HRSA) through their Workforce Diversity grant program has provided almost continuous funding to support the Caring for Our Own Program. The funding provides, for example, free tutoring to the students and monthly stipend support. HRSA also funds COOP’s orientation program which convenes the students attending various statewide campuses for leadership training and team building rooted in Native American culture and beliefs. For the students just beginning their nursing education, they get an introduction to the anatomy and physiology cadaver lab.
“Culturally, Native Americans are not allowed to go there, and sometimes they go back to their reservation and have a ceremony” said Old Coyote. “We also [discuss] their unique cultural belief systems and highlight that as a strength to them.” The program’s overall goal: to provide culturally sensitive education to American Indian people.
Nationally, American Indian nurses make up less than 1 percent of the nurse work force but they represent nearly 1 percent of the population or 3 million people. In Montana, there are seven federally recognized tribal reservations with the closest reservation located 200 miles away from the MSU campus. These geographic, ceremonial and cultural characteristics demonstrate reasons the 2010 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, emphasizes the need for a diverse nursing diverse workforce.
While Montana isn’t the only state focusing on diversifying the workforce, the COOP program is doing its part in reaching the IOM recommendation goals to support its Native American population. According to Old Coyote, the program has gone from just six to an average of 40 American Indian students and program leaders plan to help and encourage students to reach beyond their BSN as well. Ultimately, the overall goal and hope is that when COOP students graduate, they return home to become leaders and provide culturally sensitive nursing in their communities.
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Swade Morgan is a transfer student from Portland Community College and a sophomore at Montana State University. He hails from the Turtle Mountain Chippewa Indian tribe in Portland, Oregon. Morgan felt inspired to pursue a nursing career after watching nurses give care with strength and compassion to many of his family members sick with cancer. |
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Brooke Lewis is part of the Navajo tribe from Cuba, New Mexico, is a mother of two small children and a transfer student from a community college in Durango, Colorado. She is in her sophomore year and came to MSU because of the COOP program’s outreach to Native Indians. When Lewis grew up, her mother worked at the Navajo Indian Reservation Clinic becoming Lewis’s role model to pursue her nursing education so she could help her native community. |
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Tommy Gonzales is a second-career associate degree nurse who visited MSU’s COOP Program for a day in April 2012 to lend his support and insight to current students on having a career in nursing. Gonzales is part Navajo, part Apache and grew up in Kansas. Previously, he worked in forest management but now works at the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in medical surgery and in the operating room. He talks about working with Native Indian people and explains how his cultural knowledge helps him understand what his patients expect of their caregivers. |
Shown above in a photo taken during an April 2012 visit by Dr. Sue Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, senior advisor for Nursing at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and director of the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action (front row, third from left) are Twila Old Coyote, the assistant director for the Caring for Our Own Program (COOP), in back, third from the left, with her class of COOP students.
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May 7, 2012
About The Author
Susan Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, is the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Adviser for Nursing, where she is tasked with shaping and leading the Foundation’s strategies to address the nurse and nurse faculty shortages in an effort to create a higher quality of patient care in the United States. Hassmiller, who joined RWJF in 1997, recently served a six-year term… Read more about Sue Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN
Happy National Nurses Week! Today is National Nurses Day, and the beginning of a week during which we celebrate the contributions of this profession. The week fittingly ends with Florence Nightingale’s birthday on Saturday, May 12. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has a proud history of supporting nurses and nurse leadership, so this week, the RWJF Human Capital Blog will feature posts by nurses, including leaders from some of the Foundation’s nursing programs. Check back each day to see what they have to say. This post is by Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, RWJF Senior Adviser for Nursing and Director, Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action.
Earlier this month I had the privilege of traveling to Montana to help some of the state’s health care leaders launch the Montana Cooperative to Advance Health Through Nursing. This new state-based Action Coalition is working to advance recommendations from the Institute of Medicine report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.
While I was there, I met with Native American nursing students and their mentors at Montana State University. They are part of the extraordinarily impressive “Caring for Our Own: A Reservation/University Partnership,” known as the CO-OP program. These students come from desperately underserved areas and, after they graduate, they will go back to their reservations to provide culturally-sensitive, urgently needed care.
At the Action Coalition gala, the recipient of the student award told her story, moving many of us to tears. When she was 17, she tried to commit suicide. It was a nurse who saved her life, and convinced her there were things to live for and gifts she had yet to share. She told the audience that the nurse had been her role model through hard times. It had taken her many years and she had overcome many more hardships, she explained, but she will soon graduate and give back in the same way that her role model had given to her.
She and her peers are the kind of strong, dedicated, caring professionals that nursing needs, our health system needs, and patients need. I came home invigorated and encouraged by all the Montanans I had met, and the promise of progress in this state.
Today is National Nurses Day, which begins the celebration of National Nurses Week. We are a diverse profession, serving patients in more ways, more roles and more settings than Florence Nightingale—whose birthday, May 12, concludes National Nurses Week—could have ever imagined.
I am proud to be a nurse, proud of my colleagues working to help patients all over the country, and proud that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has a long history of supporting nurses in many roles, from research to practice to leadership and more.
RWJF recently announced the launch of the Academic Progression in Nursing (APIN) initiative, which will help state Action Coalitions in their work to advance the recommendation in the Future of Nursing report that 80 percent of the nursing workforce be prepared at the baccalaureate level by 2020.
I am an associate’s degree nurse. I started my nursing education at a community college, and at that time, I’m not sure I could even have imagined getting to where I am today. When I graduated, I felt ready to complete all the many tasks and procedures required of a nurse on a very busy medical unit, but I felt there was more that I needed to know. The clincher for me was when I transferred to a coronary care unit and simply felt that if I had more to do with prevention and health education, half of my patients would not have shown up on my unit in the first place. Going back to school would give me the extra information I needed to help my patients even more.
When I went back to school for my baccalaureate degree, I realized there were connections I wasn’t making that go beyond simply doing tasks. I learned about community health and care coordination, the continuum of care and payment systems—all of which helped me do more for my patients. I learned leadership and research skills, and the evidence-based practices that improve the quality of the care I provide. In essence, my BSN helped me to feel much more confident and competent in delivering patient care. Just what I needed!
Hassmiller and Montana State University CO-OP program student Brittany Iron.
I went on to get two masters’ degrees and started my career as a nurse faculty member. Teaching the next generation of nurses, and encouraging them to continue their education, had deep meaning for me. Teaching nurses how to provide the best possible care is a responsibility to our profession, and to our patients.
Today, I have my PhD and I am affecting policies and helping other nurses become leaders. I love my work and feel lucky to be able to do it. I want all nurses to have opportunities to advance their education, for themselves and for their patients.
Whether they live in bustling cities or on reservations, all Americans deserve access to high-quality, patient-centered care. We can’t provide that without a well-educated and diverse nursing workforce that contributes as essential partners in our health care system.
Learn more about the Montana Action Coalition.
Learn more about APIN.
See photos from Hassmiller’s visit to Montana and the Action Coalition gala.
Reproduced with permission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.
Apr 18, 2012
Photo courtesy of CCNA.
Even as the number of nursing students in the United States increased last year, nursing schools were forced to turn away more than 75,000 qualified applications, primarily because they lacked the teaching faculty and facilities to do otherwise. Those were the good news/bad news findings from this year’s survey of the nation’s nursing schools by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN).
Despite the number of rejections, the study finds that nursing schools accepted more students at the baccalaureate, master’s and doctoral levels of nursing education last year. Enrollment in entry-level baccalaureate programs increased by 5.1 percent over the previous year. Similarly, enrollment in doctoral nursing programs was up 28.9 percent over the previous year. Applications numbers were up as well, with 255,671 applications submitted to baccalaureate programs, an eight-year high. The figure represented a 5.6 percent increase over 2010, and more than double the number of applications submitted in 2004.
AACN found that 80,767 students graduated from baccalaureate programs last year, including 52,922 from entry-level programs and 27,845 from baccalaureate-degree-completion programs. At the graduate level, 24,311 nursing students received master’s degrees last year, while 601 graduated from research-focused doctoral programs and 1,595 from practice-focused doctoral programs.
Student diversity increased, as well. The percentage of entry-level baccalaureate nursing students from underrepresented backgrounds increased to 26.9 percent last year, according to AACN, with master’s and doctoral programs not far behind. Similarly, while men are just 6.6 percent of today’s nursing workforce, they account for 11.4 percent of nursing baccalaureate students and 9.9 percent of master’s students.
“With the release of the Institute of Medicine’s report on the Future of Nursing, the national conversations about increasing the education level of the nursing workforce are accelerating,” said AACN President Kathleen Potempa in a news release. “Last year’s enrollment increases across all types of baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs clearly indicate a strong interest among nursing students in advancing their education and developing the skills needed to thrive in contemporary care settings.”
At the same time, thousands of qualified applications were turned away from four-year colleges and universities, largely because of a shortage of faculty and facilities necessary to teach the additional nursing students. According to AACN’s data, 58,327 applications that met the admission criteria for entry-level baccalaureate programs were rejected, a 10-year high, while 2,906 were rejected by RN-to-Baccalaureate programs, 13,198 by master’s programs, and 1,156 by doctoral programs. In all 75,587 qualified applications were turned away.
Read AACN’s news release on the study.
Reproduced with permission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.
Mar 22, 2012
Carol S. Brewer, PhD, RN, FAAN, a professor at the University of Buffalo School of Nursing, leads the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)-supported RN Work Project with Christine T. Kovner, PhD, RN, FAAN. The 10-year, longitudinal study is the only one of its kind to study the careers of new nurses. Most recently, the RN Work Project released a study on the recession’s impact on new nurses.
HCB: Your most recently-published study looked at registered nurses in the recession. Can you review the most important findings?
Carol Brewer: What we found was fairly interesting and fits with some of the other studies and data we’ve collected on new graduates in the recession. We found that the nurses’ intent to stay at their current job and their organizational commitment was higher than before the recession. We also found some indicators that the work environment was a little better. The nurses report that their relationship with physicians was better, and they had a lighter workload and fewer organizational constraints.
We can interpret this in a few different ways. One is that there has actually been a change for the better in the work environment, and stress and workload are going down a little bit. But we also found that nurses perceived fewer job opportunities, so they may feel like they can’t leave their jobs because there aren’t many other opportunities. They could be making their perceptions fit their reality, which would cause them to rate their environment higher than if they knew they had options and could afford to be pickier.
More likely, these nurses are just biding their time. We found that, despite perceiving fewer opportunities, the nurses were more likely to be searching for a job. Even though the perception is that things seem to be little better with their current employer, they’re still looking for other jobs.
HCB: So the greater intent to stay in their jobs is due to fears about not being able to find new jobs?
Brewer: That’s one interpretation, yes. When you look at workforce models of turnover that’s a fairly logical, common pathway. People assess the external environment and decide how important it is that they leave. Under a constrained environment where jobs are harder to get, that’s pretty risky. In the recession, where family members and spouses may have lost their jobs, economic security alone may indicate that they need to stay put.
HCB: Does any of your prior research suggest ways that hospitals can retain nurses?
Brewer: Our work only deals with the nurses’ side, not how hospitals can address these issues, but I think there are some obvious ways to go about fixing what nurses are not happy about. One of the things we’ve been looking at is quantitative work load, and that was one of the things that seems to have gotten a little better, based on the results of this study. Easing a nurse’s workload can have multiple impacts. Improved staffing, for instance, can reduce mandatory overtime and allows nurses more control over their schedule, which improves satisfaction and organizational commitment. Workplace supports like electronic medical records are another example.
HCB: Why do you think RWJF decided to invest in this kind of study?
Brewer: When Chris[tine] and I started this study we had just completed a similar national study of nurses over a two year period. We were using many of the same measurement instruments and were one of the few who had looked at nurse turnover through a nationally represented, randomized study. Nobody had ever extended that over a longer period of time, and we knew a longitudinal study could produce extremely rich data sets for future research.
We also wanted to find out what happens to new nurses over time. Early on we found that the turnover rate of new nurses in hospitals is actually fairly low, but each survey shows an increase of nurses leaving hospitals. The conventional wisdom is that they leave nursing, but actually they typically stay in nursing; they’re just leaving the hospital setting and their original employer.
By the time this study is over we’ll have a much better picture of a nursing career. And with the recession right in the middle of it, it’ll be a really interesting perspective.
HCB: The IOM report on the Future of Nursing includes recommendations to improve nursing workforce data collection to allow for better assessment of, and projections about, the workforce. Can you talk about how the RN Work Project advances that goal?
Brewer: Our study is not easily replicable—it takes a lot of resources to do this—but it highlights some of the areas others should be paying attention to in overall efforts to collect data on the workforce. One area where I think it’s important to have data, which we’ve provided, is being able to distinguish between leaving nursing and leaving a job. Those are often confused in the news and reporting about the nursing workforce.
I think we also contribute to other recommendations in the report. We have some unique data about mobility in nursing from our study, and we’ve found that it’s not a very mobile profession. Knowing that nurses stay close to where they’re from and where they went to school has implications for how and where we educate nurses in the future.
HCB: What other studies do you have coming out soon?
Brewer: We started this study with new nursing graduates, so now we’re following nurses who’ve been in practice for roughly five to seven years. We have a paper accepted focusing on nurse’s achievement of higher education levels. We’re also working on some papers about verbal abuse on the job.
Reproduced with permission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton. NJ.
Mar 16, 2012
By Sharon Stanley, PhD, RN, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Executive Nurse Fellow, and chief nurse for the American Red Cross
March is Red Cross Month. And at the American Red Cross, it’s a time to celebrate our work in communities across the country and around the globe, and to recognize how we depend on public support to help people in need. Every meal we serve to a family displaced by disaster, every emergency message we send to a member of the military and every unit of Red Cross blood we collect is made possible by the generosity of a donor.
People support the Red Cross by making a financial contribution, becoming a volunteer, taking a class or giving blood. The level of service the Red Cross provides with these generous gifts is staggering. The organization responds to nearly 70,000 disasters a year, for example, and educates more than 9 million people in first aid, water safety and other lifesaving skills.
March is also a time to celebrate the contributions thousands of nurses and other health care professionals make to this organization. Nurses are a part of everything that happens at the American Red Cross.
Nurse volunteers help the Red Cross support veterans, members of the military and their families; they volunteer at blood drives. They provide health screenings and information at Red Cross booths during countless community events. They serve on the Nursing and Caregiving Sub-Council of the Scientific Advisory Council, which advises the American Red Cross on the development and dissemination of critical information and training related to CPR, first aid, caregiving and safety.
Thousands of Red Cross nurses are trained disaster responders. Our ranks include volunteers like Mary Steece, RN, of Scottsboro, Ala., who dropped everything to travel to Louisville, Ky., where she is helping people who lost so much in the tornados earlier this month.
The Red Cross relies greatly on nurses like Mary Steece in disaster recovery. But nurses also need to play a role before disaster strikes, in preparedness efforts that go on all year. A part of my work with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellowship is to more fully integrate nurses into community preparedness and to take a bigger role in the leadership of those efforts.
The Red Cross also aims to build on our existing human capital by enhancing the skills of the next generation of nurse volunteers through the Red Cross National Student Nurse Program, The Red Cross’ National Nursing Committee, in partnership with several national nursing organizations, is developing a menu of activities and community courses that nursing students can access while volunteering for the Red Cross, including the new Red Cross Disaster Health Sheltering Course. Now offered in nursing schools nationwide, the course builds awareness about disaster preparedness, teaches response skills and raises awareness of the critical role nurses play in their communities in times of disaster.
Read a Q&A with RWJF senior adviser for nursing Susan Hassmiller about her work with the American Red Cross. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, was a recipient of the organization’s Florence Nightingale award, nursing’s highest international honor.
Read more about the RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows program.
Reproduced with permission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.
Mar 13, 2012
By California Action Coalition Statewide Director Mary Dickow, MPA
Over the past 16 months, the California Action Coalition has been engaged in a variety of activities to move the work of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Future of Nursing report ahead in our state. As one of the first five pilot states selected to host Action Coalitions, we have had the opportunity to test a few ideas that have been met with success, and we have had opportunities for growth. We feel the lessons we have learned during this period can contribute to the success of other states as they roll out their Action Coalition activities and to all of us who want to get the word out about this groundbreaking report.
One of our most successful initiatives has been overseeing “town hall”-style events to inform a broad audience of our work and to interest new volunteers to join our growing ranks across the state. The Action Coalition held its second statewide town hall event in Los Angeles on February 27, 2012. This “sold out” event, entitled: Partner With Nurses for a Healthy California, was held at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. More than 110 people, including nurses, students, health professionals, consumers and representatives from area businesses and associations, registered for the event.
Mary Foley, RN, PhD, the nursing co-lead for our Action Coalition, welcomed the enthusiastic crowd and introduced Linda Burnes Bolton, DrPH, FN, FAAN, a trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and vice president of nursing at Cedars Sinai Medical Center. She provided the group with an overview of the IOM Future of Nursing Report and the national perspective about the campaign to implement the report’s recommendations.
I then had the opportunity to provide an update on progress from the California perspective. My remarks were followed by a panel discussion moderated by Kathy Harren, RN, MHA, MSNc, regional director of the Nursing Institute at Providence Health & Health Services. The panel consisted of Terry Hill, MD, vice president of medical groups services at Hill Physicians Group; Michele Rigsby Pauley, RN, MSN, CPNP, program director of COACH for Kids at Cedars Sinai; Linda Philips, PhD, RN, professor of nursing and Audrienne H. Mosley Endowed Chair at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Nursing; and Phillip Bautista, BSN, a recent graduate of California State University at Fresno.
The audience had a chance to interact with all speakers and to provide comments to the Action Coalition for future consideration. This event, like our first town hall meeting held in Sacramento, Calif. in August 2011, provided our team with necessary input and perspectives from a wide audience.
Much of our work in California is built around ideas and suggestions that we receive from our statewide partners. Given the size and diversity of our state, this kind of input from our regional partners is critically important to our success as an Action Coalition. We are excited to report that we have several more town hall events in the works for other parts of the state. We are currently locking in dates for events in Humboldt, San Diego, Central Valley and San Jose, to name a few.
With each town hall event, we have a planning committee that includes members of the executive committee, the statewide director, and volunteers from the local area. That structure allows us to have people in the immediate area provide assistance and staff the town halls as well as some overall technical assistance and guidance at the statewide level. This format has worked well and we will continue to refine it for future events.
We rely on our “lessons learned” in all we do to make improvements and to revisit how we do things. The town hall events are no different. We can see from both events to date that there are opportunities to improve the content and diversity of the audience moving forward. We invite everyone who cares about nursing and health care in California to attend one of our upcoming events, and would be happy to share tips on constructing and advertising the town hall—including format, delivery and audience engagement—with any other Action Coalitions across the country.
I know California has benefited greatly from interactions with other state coalitions and has valued input and feedback from our partners. Anything we can do to share those experiences more broadly is an advantage for all of us.
Read more about the work of the California Action Coalition and the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, and an interview with RWJF senior adviser for nursing Susan Hassmiller on plans for the Campaign in 2012.
Reproduced with permission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.
Mar 13, 2012
With unprecedented numbers of Americans nearing old age, experts say the health care system will need tens of thousands more providers with training in geriatrics to handle the population’s increasing, and increasingly complex, needs. But too few physicians, nurses and dentists who specialize in geriatrics, or who have completed geriatric training, are in the pipeline.
Last week, the New York Times explored the problem, along with some emerging solutions. The story observes that geriatricians usually make much less money than other primary care providers or specialists, and Medicare reimbursements for geriatric care are comparatively low. For a doctor with debt from medical school, those factors can be a powerful deterrent to going into the field. “Geriatrics is also seen as a plodding area of medicine, set apart from the glamour of life-saving heroics,” the New York Times asserts. “That may be why the specialty has made little headway among nurses as well.”
Completing geriatric training after medical school can also pose financial challenges, as providers may be reluctant to take a financial hit for programs that would keep them out of the workplace for longer. With that in mind, the geriatric residency required for board certification has been reduced from two years to one, and the federal government and several private groups offer funding for geriatric education fellowships. The American Geriatrics Society also offers a variety of flexible training options, including weekend workshops and online courses.
Similar barriers keep nurses from specializing in geriatrics. Fewer than 1 percent of registered nurses and fewer than 3 percent of advanced practice registered nurses are certified in geriatrics, according to the American Geriatrics Society.
Geriatrics should be integrated into nursing school curricula, experts say, as a stand-alone component or included in clinical practice. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing has teamed up with the John A. Hartford Foundation to help advance this goal, working to develop geriatric care competencies and recognizing model education programs through prestigious awards. Other organizations have also demonstrated support for nurse geriatric training by providing funds or creating training programs in health care settings.
What do you think? How can we encourage more health care providers to specialize in geriatrics or complete geriatric training? Register below to leave a comment.
Read the New York Times story.
Read a story from Sharing Nursing’s Knowledge about geriatric training for nurses.
Learn more about how health care providers can work with older patients and their caregivers.
Reproduced with permission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.
Mar 1, 2012
By Brent MacWilliams, PhD, ANP, Instructor, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Member of the Board of Directors, American Assembly for Men in Nursing
The American Assembly of Men in Nursing (AAMN) is taking a leadership role through strategic partnerships to create a more inclusive and diverse nursing profession. Men have a long, but often unrecognized history, of being successful caregivers.
Historically, men have been culturally relegated to nursing roles that focused on technical and administrative duties on the assumption that the “high-touch” roles were best provided by female nurses. The research, however, fails to support this assumption. What appears to be supported in the literature is that all nurses express their caring values in unique and personal ways. Female nursing peers, fellow health care professionals, and patients find that their male peers and caregivers are both technically competent and caring.
Nurses, regardless of their gender, provide care that is as diverse as the patients we serve. The Institute of Medicine’s report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, underscores the need for a diverse nursing workforce, and that must include a larger proportion of men than we have today. The AAMN is committed to partnering with organizations that share our passion for diversity and that recognize the accomplishments of male nurses. One of our partners, The DAISY Foundation, is a perfect example of a partner organization that supports AAMN’s vision and values.
The DAISY Foundation has recognized hundreds of men who are nurses for their competence, compassion and caring. The DAISY Award serves to honor the super-human work that nurses provide, regardless of their gender. It honors great clinical skills and leadership but also strong patient care and compassion.
DAISY is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System, and the organization serves to honor the memory of J. Patrick Barnes, who died from complications of an auto-immune disease and who was cared for by wonderful nurses. The DAISY Foundation was founded to honor Patrick and the nurses who cared for him.
Caring serves as the foundation of nursing practice, and men offer unique caring behaviors that add value to the nursing profession. Men who are nurses can meet men’s need for health care insights from a personal/masculine perspective that may improve men’s health.
When you look at a male face you may not think “nurse,” but that perception is changing, one person and one patient at a time. Thanks to organizations like AAMN, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), and the DAISY Foundation, all of which value and support diversity within the nursing profession, the public and professional image of nursing is becoming more inclusive.
Reproduced with permission of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton, N.J.
