Elsevier

Journal of Professional Nursing

Volume 25, Issue 6, November–December 2009, Pages 335-339
Journal of Professional Nursing

Partners in Solutions to the Nurse Faculty Shortage

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2009.10.005Get rights and content

The looming shortage of nurses and the faculty to educate them threatens Americans' access to quality health care across all settings. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Foundation, and AARP are joining together to raise the level of awareness of this crisis and solutions to resolve it in a sustained way. These leaders in health and social change created the Center to Champion Nursing in America (the Center) to ensure Americans have the highly skilled nurses we need to provide affordable, quality health care now and in a reformed health care system. Through national summits and technical assistance with states, the Center and RWJF are collaborating with a broad range of partners to increase nursing education capacity. At the national level, the Champion Nursing Coalition represents the voice of consumers, purchasers, and providers of health care to support solutions to the nurse and nurse faculty shortage. Working with this broad constituency, the nursing community can better address the workforce concerns that affect the people we serve.

Section snippets

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and American Association of Retired Persons Partnership

A primary goal of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is to improve the quality of health care for all Americans, and several years ago, the Foundation realized that this goal could never be attained without addressing nursing workforce issues. The Foundation recognized that nurses have many ideas on how to solve the problems our nation faces in training the next generation of nurses and nurse faculty and that those solutions needed to be heard and widely disseminated. Nursing-generated

State-Specific Models

The Center also sponsored a site visit to the offices of the exemplar Mississippi state team to help participating states learn firsthand about:

  • Collecting and analyzing nurse supply and demand data.

  • The importance of using accurate data to support legislation and funding requests.

  • Developing and implementing a nursing workforce center.

  • Education redesign.

  • The impact of developing and maintaining strategic partnerships outside the nursing community to help support capacity building efforts.

The

Leveraging Research and Information to Impact Health Policy Discussions

At the national level, the Center is working to build a diverse coalition of multidisciplinary health care, business, and consumer coalitions at both the state and national levels. The Champion Nursing Coalition represents the voices of consumers, purchasers, and providers of health care to support solutions to the nursing shortage. Its purpose is to raise awareness about the shortage and achieve permanent solutions to this looming health care crisis. The Coalition is working with education and

What Can Nursing Do Better?

The RWJF/AARP collaboration is helping to frame the urgent issues, shine a bright spotlight on them, and present solutions to the people who can really change nursing in America. This partnership is drawing attention to addressing nursing workforce concerns as vital to providing health care delivery in the nation, to answering the question, “Who will care for us now and in the future?” This partnership is increasing and expanding the roles of stakeholders and coalitions that will advocate for

References (4)

  • American Association of Colleges of Nursing

    Addressing the nursing shortage: A focus on nurse faculty

  • ClarkeS. et al.

    More nursing, fewer deaths

    Quality and Safety in Healthcare

    (2006)
There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

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