"THE PROMISE OF NURSING IN THE COMING HEALTH SYSTEM"

New Jersey Nurse, Jul/Aug 2004 by Lutton, Gay

State nursing workforce groups and interested health stakeholders from around the country met in Orlando, Florida, April 29 and 30 for the 2nd Annual Conference of State Nursing Workforce Centers to discuss what is being done at the various state levels to address the current nursing shortage and the chronic, underlying issues that attend it.

The keynote speaker, Dr. Edward O'Neil, Director of the University of California Center for Health Professions and Professor of Family and Community Medicine and Dental Public Health, emphasized the need for nurses to own the continuum of service. He advocated that a strengthened nursing leadership needs to "articulate, differentiate, and integrate a full range of nursing service, declare victory, and push ahead." Dr. O'Neil believes that nursing has hampered its development into one strong, unified, respected voice because of fragmentation in the areas of education and timidity in taking hold of the profession and asserting its rightful place in the medical hierarchy.

Dr Geri Dickson, Executive Director of the NJ Collaborative Center for Nursing (NJCCN), presented a poster exhibition showing the development of the Center and the models that were created collaboratively with other NJ healthcare stakeholders. These models included the NJ Forecasting Model, the education Articulation Model, and the NJ Competency-Based Nursing Model. Elementary through high school recruitment posters and DVDs advertising nursing as a profession were also available at the display table.

Nursing Workforce groups from Iowa, North Carolina, North Dakota, Illinois, Vermont, Mississippi, Oregon, California, Wisconsin, and Missouri presented their research or programs that have been conducted in addressing the nursing shortages in their states. Topics centered on education and retention practices and offered a glimpse at the variety of ideas and strategies that are being used to resolve the current and future shortages.

The education speakers looked at funding issues, seamless entry nursing education curriculum, legislative pre-requisites for nursing courses, standardization of admission policies, and regional articulation agreements across a state, and model curricula.

Retention Practices included several awards programs that celebrate nursing excellence and strive to encourage and inspire the pursuit of advanced education; a pilot program that actively addressed the four major areas of nursing discontent, i.e., time with patients, intellectual stimulation, healthy workplace cultures and teams, and ergonomics and safety; research that looked at "Nurse's Perception of Workload" and a second presentation that described a tool to measure the gap between the importance employees place on organizational issues and their perception of organizational performance.

Mimi Cappelli, RN, President of NJSNA serves as Chairperson of the New Jersey Collaborating Center for Nursing. Sharon R. Rainer, RN, NJSNA member of Region V and staff member of NJSNA serves as a board member.

The 3rd Annual Conference of Nursing Workforce Centers will meet in Oregon, 2005. For questions or requests for NJCCN materials/ information, log on to www.njccn.org or contact Gay Lutton, Associate Director for NJCCN at 973-3531307.

By Gay Lutton, MSN, RN