In 2010, the Robert Woods Foundation and the Institute of Medicine released the Future of Nursing Report after doing extensive research to gather evidence supporting their claims in the report. The report was, on the whole, positive for nurses because it said that they should be given more responsibility and be more autonomous. It also called for more education for nurses and increased access to resources so that nurses could engage in research to address the issues that arise in their practices. The IOM report’s purpose was to improve nursing by giving them more control, more knowledge and more support.
The four main messages of the IOM report are that:
• Nurses should practice to the full extent of their education and training.
• Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression.
• Nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other health care professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States.
• Effective workforce planning and policy making require better data collection and information infrastructure (IOM, 2011)
Allowing nurses to practice to the full extent of their education and training is important for several reasons including the fact that doing so will provide greater healthcare coverage of patients and relieve some of the burden of patient care that physicians have. Not only that, it gives nurses the respect that they deserve after completing a rigorous course of college education that qualifies them for more than they have often been allowed to do in the past. With that said, higher levels of education will help nurses to earn the respect and give them the means to practice more autonomously. Physicians will be able to rely on nurses with better education so that their burden is eased some, and nurses can partner with physicians in practices so that the types of issues they are trained to address can be shifted to their authority. Finally, better education for nurses will result in nurses that know how to find evidence to help them address issues their patients may have. If the resources and funding are provided, nurses will be able to research evidence-based solutions because their training will facilitate it and their authority will require it.
Order this paper