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Editor's
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Radical solutions are needed in order to avert a major health care crisis. Who will care for the sick, injured and well schoolchildren, senior citizens, new mothers and babies, the dying—all people from all walks of life—if there are no nurses? While nurses are running away from their jobs and retiring early or simply choosing to not work as registered nurses, schools of nursing are partnering with health care providers to overhaul the system of nursing education and practice. A leader among these nationwide efforts is Oregon, where the Oregon Nursing Leadership Council sponsored an invitational conference June 22 to discuss cooperative solutions to their nursing crisis. It was an impressive gathering of hospital and long-term care administrators, insurers, educators, nurses, physicians and politicians, joining together to develop and commit to solutions to ease the nurse shortage situation and stem the looming crisis. The Oregonian called the proposal to double nursing school enrollment by 2004 and develop an overhaul of everything from nursing education to bedside decision-making to take-home pay an "unlikely coalition of educators, executives, regulators and union officials." I was pleased to be a small part of this gathering of 160 leaders to address nursing and its future for the citizens of Oregon. The plan was called our "Endangered Species Act" by Debbie Burton, a member of the Oregon State Board of Nursing. "When extinction is around the corner, we need to get pretty aggressive," Burton said. What makes this so exciting is that the Northwest Health Foundation announced that it would fund $75,000 for seed money to start the Oregon Center for Nursing to implement the plan. In addition, the Rev. David Tyson, president of the University of Portland, announced that space for the center would be available at the university, if the planners wanted to place the center there. U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., pledged his support for bills to fund nursing education and perhaps start a nurse corps program. Hats off to the leaders in Oregon. Can others follow or at least gain as much visibility and momentum to be academic sluggers? Can educators teach nursing students to meet the needs of consumers as well as the constantly changing health care system? Are nurse educators capable of implementing the practice role of the professional nurse? Do they know enough about administration to articulate to students the real world of nursing practice? How is leadership taught so that neophyte nurses learn how to communicate and delegate to unlicensed personnel? Do those in service settings create environments conducive to the professional practice of nursing so that today’s young professionals can translate the ideals of education into the real world of practice? Are nurse leaders in both education and service seeking the same goals of excellence in patient care? Let us renew our commitment to nursing and the public we serve. Compromise and a clear vision for the future will be necessary if nursing delivery systems and education are to meet their responsibility to work together for a healthier tomorrow for nursing and its role in society.
What
do you think?
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NEWS
AND TRENDS | CAREER
CENTER | EDUCATION
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