Spring has come to the Great Lakes region, just as we knew it would. Part of tolerating the long winter months is knowing that in April the snow will melt, the clouds will give way to bright, sunny days, and the trees and flowers will burst into bloom.

This month also has brought us important new information about nursing. NurseWeek and the American Organization of Nurse Executives have released the results of a landmark study that asked more than 4,000 registered nurses nationwide what they think about the many critical issues that affect our practice. Their responses confirmed that they are concerned about the effect of the nursing shortage on the quality of care they deliver and that they have less time to spend with their patients.

These responses are similar to other reports and studies about nursing, and are important in driving solutions that will ensure that the emphasis on patient care remains the central focus of our efforts.

Just as important, this study brings to light some remarkable findings regarding how nurses feel about the profession and their careers. Nurses have been portrayed by many sources as unhappy and dissatisfied with their jobs, but a majority of respondents report that they are satisfied with being nurses and would recommend nursing to others as a career. These findings provide an important platform to continue the development of solutions that will improve the profession and patient care.

A positive voice from nursing about the profession can go a long way to energize the enormous number of new nursing initiatives in our workplaces, communities and as national agendas. We should expect that these projects and initiatives will yield new and exciting approaches to the challenges of our profession.

One challenge that each of us has is to look to the future and imagine how nursing care will be delivered several years from now. What will the role of the professional nurse be and how will we care for patients? It is clear that in order to ensure the best care for patients with the limited supply of nurses, we will have to work differently.

In creating several scenarios, some nurse experts predict the extensive use of sophisticated technology that will enable the nurse to focus on planning and outcomes of care, and be assisted in the delivery of care by additional trained providers. Look carefully at what this scenario suggests. Technology will be superior to what we have today, and the nurse will have learned to effectively employ other caregivers to ensure that professional nurse time and expertise are used to deliver the highest levels of patient care.

These views of the future make clear that the role of the RN will become even more critical in the care delivery system. So the challenge we face is how we can generate fresh ideas and, like spring, create an annual renewal that will energize us all. We need to spend time envisioning our future and determining how we will build the bridges to get there.

The results of the survey clearly say that there are plenty of us who will be the nurses of tomorrow, by choice, and therefore we should participate in creating our future. It is up to us to create the advances for the future of nursing. Imagining and transforming are hard work, but the result will be critical. It is our responsibility to lead nursing into the future, so each one of us must contribute our best ideas. I am confident we can do it.