The work of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) committee initiative that led to IOM report was necessitated by widespread challenges that nurses encountered in their practice. The issues were attributed to the ever evolving and complex nature of health care system that nurses had problems in handling, thus, interfering with their practice. Therefore, it was imperative to reform nursing practice by addressing the challenges that nurses encountered and prepare nurses to actively participate in health care improvement and remain updated in the face of changing health care system and technological development.
Informed by these nursing challenges, the RWJF committee initiative opted to determine the nursing practice in various health care settings across the US. After conducting the assessment, the RWJF established that there was huge disparity in the nursing competencies and academic credentials. Moreover, the committee noted that there is need to create mechanisms that could motivate nurses to work to the full extent of their competency and deliver quality care in the future. To realize these objectives, the RWJF committee initiative reported that nurses need to be given superior training and education that are supported by the quality education system (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2016). Overall, the work of the RWFJ committee initiative was to conduct the assessment and make recommendations on what could be done to change the future of nursing profession and the action that could be taken to be successful in changing the future of nursing practice.
The culmination of the RWJF work was the formulation of the IOM report dubbed, “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.” This report entailed detailed evidence-based plans on how to improve nursing practice and to better the future of nursing. Among the major proposals in the report included ensuring capacity building of nursing training institutions, ensuring nurse residency programs, striving for 80% of nurses with baccalaureate degrees’ qualification and having more nurses with doctorate degrees. The report also called for the creation of flexible nursing programs that are future oriented to facilitate continuous nursing education.
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