Future

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and IOM launched a two-year initiative to respond to the need to assess and transform the nursing profession. Nursing as a profession dates back to Nightingales era in her effort to formalize and reshape nursing.

There are eight evidence-based recommendations from IOM Future of Nursing Report that would improve delivery of care to patients in general. One of the recommendations that struck me the most is to increase the proportions of nurses with baccalaureate degrees to 80% by 2020.

Through time, nursing has evolved from untrained individuals to trained personnel rendering care to the sick population.

Being equipped with the appropriate training and knowledge (having obtained the baccalaureate degree), nurses will be able to deliver rationalized interventions tailored to the continually changing needs of the patients and thereby improving patient safety and outcome. Baccalaureate degree provides the nurses more avenues in the practice, such as clinical nurse specialist, nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife, and registered nurse anesthetist with the end goal of improving patient care. Baccalaureate degree will help prepare the individual/s to face the ever-changing web of complexity in the healthcare system in whatever advance practice one partakes. Advance education is the gold standard for a better future.

A more educated nursing workforce would be better equipped to meet the demands of an evolving health care system, and this could be met by increasing the percentage of nurses with a Baccalaureate degree.

Institute of Medicine.(2016).The Future of Nursing Leading Change, Advancing Health Report Recommendations.

http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2010/The-Future-of-Nursing/Nursing%20Education%202010%20Brief.pdf

Denisco,S.M.,