Nursing Profession in Peril?

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

Is the future development of nursing as a profession at risk?

Millions of baby boomers march relentlessly forward, toward chronic illnesses and health-care needs associated with them. The current crisis in health care has directed our attention to the challenges accompanying the need for educating more nurses and preparing more nurse educators. The immediacy of current and projected shortages in the nursing workforce has distracted us from a potentially even more devastating crisis: Without attention to nursing scholarship, nursing science will not continue to advance. In directing the energies of the profession so completely toward issues of manpower, the continuation of the profession and its expansion as a discipline are put at risk...

The number of nursing faculty experienced and skilled in research and scholarship is declining because of retirement and insufficient numbers of new scholars entering academia. This trend, alone, puts the future development of the nursing profession at risk. In addition, the increasing expectations placed upon the existing professoriate in the teaching and essential institutional service arenas necessitated by this shortage limit both the time and energy of senior faculty who are most qualified to advance the profession...

The viability of any profession is dependent upon the ongoing generation and dissemination of knowledge. In the current and predicted environments, nursing academic institutions and individual faculty must acknowledge the fundamental role of research and scholarship in the advancement of the profession and seek methods by which they can provide support....

It is imperative that senior faculty and administrators identify interventions that foster the generation and dissemination of knowledge. For the profession of nursing to thrive in generations to come, innovation and commitment today are vital.

For more on this important topic, please refer to:

Emerson, R.J., & Records, K. (2005). Nursing: Profession in peril. Journal of

Professional Nursing, 21

(1), 9-15.

http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/623097/description#description