Vision of Nursing in 2030

rninformatics, DNP, RN · Jan 23, 2006

you might find these pieces frrom the On-line Journal in Nursing Informatics helpful. Enjoy!

Angela

Editorial: The Year is 2007

http://www.eaa-knowledge.com/ojni/ni/7_3/articles_features.htm

Virtual Nursing Practice and Culture.

http://www.eaa-knowledge.com/ojni/ni/8_1/june.htm

carmel99 · Jan 24, 2006

Thanks some of the information will help make my paper much more creative.

Nakeshia Dent

Calfax · Jan 25, 2006

Carmel99 (Nakeshia),

Don't do the assignment. It's BS. Tell your teacher that you expect a better quality educational product than that. You (or your parents) are paying for a good education...you need to demand that your teachers don't waste your time.. Tell him or her an assignment like this is evidence that you should sue the university for breach of contract.

(why such a fire-breathing response? I will explain further below. I know you really have to do the assignment but it is a waste of your time. )

How far ahead is the year 2030......about 25 years from now. An entire generation away from now and at the long end of your professional career. How can you project what nursing will be like then? You can't. Too much variability between now and then. It could be a bright shiny future...or another dark age.

In the 1970's they thought we would all be space-commuting to the moon or something based upon the success of the Apollo missions. Obviously that hasn't happened. But we became a "global village" which was totally unforseen.

Such a request to speculate as to what nursing will be like 25 years from now is easy to fulfil. "Nursing will be done entirely by robots who will keep your cloned organs in tip-top condition....blah, blah, blah." or words to that effect. Two pages of what you imagine would be neato is easy to come up with. But as an exercise, it has no value for you beyond creative writing. Anything that has "vision" or "mission statement" in it gets deleted from my email because it has no meaning.

It will not help you prepare for the backbreaking, mind-numbing hard labor you will be slogging through when you get your license and go to work. You will be busy.

However the assignment could have been valuable to you if it had been worded more like this: "Choose a current issue or trend or process in nursing. Identify any technological aspect relating to the above..i.e. what technology is involved with that issue, trend or process. Research current and projected developments in that technology and describe how such these developments will alter the issue, trend or process. Develop a plan for implimenting the technology at a department, hospital or industry-wide level and calculate the cost to do so. Use a cost-projection model to extrapolate the future cost of the technology against future developments."

If you sat there and went "Huh?", don't worry. You will learn to do all that naturally. It is a lot easier, tho, if you don't have to learn on the fly. You can do the above assignment using MS word and an Excel spreadsheet and you will have a cool graph or 2 as an attachment.

Basically it breaks down to this: let's say you want to monitor blood sugars. How do you do this now? How much does it cost now? Who pays that cost? What developments are underway in blood glucose monitors? Maybe there's an automatic implantable monitor under development. How much does it cost now? In the future? Compare it to an alternative development....maybe there is a transcutaneous monitor like a pulse-oximeter? How much does that cost now? In the future? Who is the payor?

This is a little harder assignment than "Nursing will be done entirely with holograms and genetically-engineered monkeys in 2030". But you would learn a whole lot more. Like a process for developing and implimenting a particular technology. You can then apply similar processes across many different types of technologies....and you go from daydreaming about the future, as your teacher has requested you to do, to actively directing it. That way you control your future....not the other way around.

Someone like me will be your future boss and believe me, you walk in with a "vision" and it will get shredded. However, you walk in with a process proposal that includes cost analyses and projections, I'm going to look at you in a completely different light. You aren't completely worthless.

Now if you ask how that relates to nursing, it does directly. You are the end user/administrator of thousands of technologies. Therefore your input, evaluation and needs within the technology are actually important. Unfortunately nurses are not taught nor encouraged to be involved in that process....so changes are made to nurses not by them.

So....print this out and show it to your teacher. Tell him or her to stop giving you crap assignments because it won't help you succeed. I will concede that yes....speculation and vision are important in a broad sense "In 2030, nurses will be the primary loci of healthcare access for patients, producing customized care plans based on a spectrum of treatment options and disciplines. Americans will never be so healthy nor have they ever have such control or choice over their healthcare options...".

Such a vision is a philosophical and passionate thing like JFK's Rice Stadium moon speech:

" We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

What your teacher had better be teaching you is tools you can use to achieve your visions. Remember that your teacher is just some poor schmuck working a job like most of us and sometimes they need to be challenged a bit if he or she is going to become a better teacher. If he or she does not accept the challenge, then get a new teacher. As a student, push the bar a bit too. That's how you succeed. How you win the future you envision. Got it? Cool.

carolinapooh, BSN, RN · Jan 25, 2006

I LOVE THAT ANSWER! And it's exactly what I think whenever I get crap, copout assignments.

carmel99 · Jan 25, 2006

I love that answer. I finished my paper last night trying to be as creative as possible, but I defintely thought the assignment was a bunch of crap and a waste of my important time. We present the papers today in class so we will see what everyone elses vision of nursing would be in 2030. Peace

Vishwamitr · Apr 25, 2012

Dear Nakeshia,

I couldn't agree more with you. It is indeed preposterous to try to speculate the future of nursing or any other industry for that matter.

In my 16 years of nursing, I have seen so many ups and downs that it makes no sense to try to project the growth, demand, or the trend.

Your passion is palpable in your fiery response and no one should take any offense to that.

Great reply.

Al