Join Our Conversation on Health Care in the Community

By Susan Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing, at the Institute of Medicine

Two million registered nurses are at the heart of American’s health care system and make up the largest segment of the health care workforce.  Nurses provide care at every phase of life; they tend to coughs and sneezes in school and contractions during childbirth, annual physicals and daily home care. 

On December 3rd a forum focusing on nursing in the community will take place in Philadelphia, featuring policy experts and real world practitioners discussing the role of nurses in our transforming health care system. This forum, the Future of Nursing: Community Health, Public Health, Primary Care, and Long-Term Care, is the second of three nationwide forums convened by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing at the Institute of Medicine (IOM). Because the year-long Initiative is looking at innovative ways to improve health care quality and address the nursing shortage in the United States, the other two forum topics are nursing across acute care settings and nursing education.

In the Initiative’s ongoing efforts to engage as many people as possible and include their voices, we will webcast the day's panels and accept real time comments from online viewers that will be integrated into the proceedings. We will also have a Twitter feed where people can follow the activities at @FutureofNursing.  For the forums, we have been soliciting written comments from interested groups and individuals which will be featured in our panels, and, we are also planning listening sessions, a kind of "open mic" segment during which anyone in the room can offer impromptu thoughts or comments.

The Initiative’s series of public forums are about developing innovative solutions at all levels and engaging a broad array of stakeholders—including the public at large. Nurses work extends far beyond hospitals, and we want consumers to understand that with an increase in the number of well educated nurses, they will have access to a more affordable and higher quality of health care in their communities. We hope everyone reading this will tune in and participate in these forums, and in the evolving policy debates about nursing in the United States.

Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, is Senior Advisor for Nursing, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Director, RWJF Initiative on the Future of Nursing, at the Institute of Medicine

Editor's Note:  In Philadelphia, 11th Street Family Health Services, Drexel University, provides nurse-led, interdisciplinary health care in a previously underserved area of the city.