Nursing Professional Development: Roles and Accountabilities
Diana Swihart, PhD, DMin, MSN, CS, RN-BC
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Posted: 07/08/2009
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Let us never consider ourselves finished nurses....we must be learning all of our lives --
Florence Nightingale
How do organizations recruit and retain the best students and nurses available in the midst of a profound nursing shortage? How do they bring an advanced beginner employee who is new to nursing practice or a clinician new to leadership, for example, into greater levels of professional competency, proficiency, and expertise to achieve the best possible patient care outcomes in the least amount time with the fewest possible resources? How do they manage escalating technologies for a global audience?
Nurses are expected to recognize and respond to a plethora of new demands arising from an ever-changing and increasingly complex healthcare system. Multiple new regulations and accreditations processes, professional standards, increased accountabilities, and financial priorities require more of direct care nurses and nurse leaders already struggling to gain and sustain competencies in evolving arenas of practice, quality, and safe patient care. Today’s politico-societal healthcare environments include growing shifts and disconnects in patient care needs and the availability of human, material, and fiscal resources required to meet those needs.
Nursing professional development specialists are the keys to successful succession planning, managing competing priorities, and effecting cost avoidance. These practitioners are more than educators. They emphasize safety, quality, efficiency, and effectiveness of practice while rapidly transitioning diverse generations of nurses into practice. They understand adult learning principles, career development...