To this end, the Pennsylvania State Nurses Association, a co-leader of the Pennsylvania Action Coalition, joined a 50-state campaign to advance the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine’s 2010 Future of Nursing report. Leading the campaign are the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the Center to Champion Nursing in America, and the AARP Foundation.
Chaired by Julie Fairman, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Nightingale Professor at Penn Nursing, the steering committee of the Pennsylvania Action Coalition is developing a mission statement and strategic plan -- or “map” – to meet the IOM’s recommendations in Pennsylvania.
Time is of the essence. Pennsylvania ranks fourth in the nation among states with a population aged 65 and older, after Florida, West Virginia, and Maine, according to the 2010 Census, with similarly high rates of diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. The demand for healthcare providers of course is growing in tandem.
To meet the increasing healthcare needs of the U.S. population, the IOM report recommended:
• Increasing the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree to 80 percent by 2020
• Doubling the number of nurses with a doctoral degree by 2020
• Developing nurse leaders to advance health
• Building an infrastructure for the collection and analysis of interprofessional healthcare workforce data to ensure equitable distribution of resources.
Advancing the education of nurses is particularly important. The national average for nurses with a bachelor’s degree is about 50 percent, and in Pennsylvania it is about 41 percent. Susan Hassmiller, senior adviser for nursing with RWJF, spoke not about a so-called “nursing shortage,” but about a faculty shortage. Estimates show that some 3,000 eligible nursing students are turned away every year by education programs in Pennsylvania for insufficient numbers of faculty to teach them.
As she pointed out, having more highly educated healthcare professionals will lead to safer and more effective care, and having more nurse practitioners and midwives in practice would help create a more cost-effective system.
The Pennsylvania Action Coalition will next establish regional coalitions co-led by a nurse and a non-nurse partner. This is where the real work will take place. When you are called to participate, I urge you to join.
You have a role in ensuring more equitable care, state-by-state, in a country in increasing need of it.
