Future of Nursing Education

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The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12956.html

This paper is excerpted from Appendix I of The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health (Institute of Medicine, 2011).

I The Future of Nursing Education1
Edited by Linda R. Cronenwett, Ph.D, R.N., FAAN University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
“Learn the past, watch the present, and create the future.”

In October 2009, Don Berwick and I were out of the country when we received invitations from Susan Hassmiller to co-author a background paper on the future of nursing education for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/Institute of Medicine (RWJF/IOM) Committee on the Future of Nursing. Initial conversations led to long lists of potential topics to be covered. Inevitably, we kept coming back to the question: What would be useful to committee members who deserved a base for their deliberations that was focused and helpful? In the end, we decided that detailed descriptions of the current challenges and recommendations for the future of nursing education from two people were not the answer. Instead, we requested and received permission to challenge five leaders, in addition to ourselves, to write short papers focused on recommendations addressing the most important three issues from each of their perspectives. With input from the RWJF/IOM Committee members and staff, we chose five esteemed (and busy) leaders and asked them to rise to this challenge within 10 weeks. Each person agreed, and each met the deadline. There were no group discussions, and, since each of us submitted our papers at the same time (no one finished early!), no one altered his or her content based on reading someone else’s contributions. responsibility for the content of this article rests with the authors and does not necessarily represent the
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