By Marguerite Lucea, Senior Consultant for the Nursing Executive Center
As a nurse, I've dedicated my career to strengthening our profession in a variety of settings and countries. So I've been closely following Nursing Now 2020—a new program of the Burdett Trust for Nursing in conjunction with the International Council of Nurses and the World Health Organization. The Duchess of Cambridge spoke during a global webcast on February 27 to launch the global program, which aims to raise nurses' profile and influence, and empower nurses within practice and policy settings.
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Nursing Now 2020 spotlights the invaluable contributions of nurses—and calls for us to do more. But the "more" isn't easy. Having worked at the global policy level, I know that translating policy and guidance into practice is challenging.
But at Advisory Board's Nursing Executive Center (NEC), we've been working on many of the initiative's focal areas for several years. Here are three key ways we approach those topics:
- Implement best practices for improving care quality
- Becoming a high reliability clinical enterprise, ensuring that every patient receives the known standard of care every time and in every setting;
- Preventing pressure ulcers and patient falls and other preventable adverse events; and
- Elevating frontline critical thinking to overcome task-focused tunnel vision.
- Invest in workforce development
- Best practices for building a highly engaged workforce in today's rapidly transforming health care environment;
- Strategic guidance for fixing four foundational cracks that undermine care team resilience; and
- Tools for building first-year nurse loyalty—which focus on skill development, hardwiring a support network, and launching early career planning.
- Recruit more nurses into leadership positions
- Tools to improve the competency of nurse leaders;
- Best practices for addressing nurse manager overload; and
- Strategic planning tools and templates that equip nurse executives to be active participants in decision-making and setting strategy.
Nursing Now 2020's primary aims are to disseminate evidence, share good practices in nursing, and provide implementation support for these practices.
In recent years, NEC has identified executive strategies and best practices for ensuring safe, high-quality care. These include research initiatives on:
Nursing Now 2020 aims to promote consistency in nurses' preparation and practice.
Some of NEC's newest research focuses on three aspects of workforce development:
Nursing Now 2020 also wants to increase nurses' involvement in policy and leadership roles.
To help organizations develop effective nursing leaders, NEC's research has focused on:
Through the Nursing Now 2020 initiative and continued work through Advisory Board's growing network of nursing leaders, I believe we can elevate nursing's position and contributions in health care organizations now and into the future.
New: The 4 foundational cracks that are undermining your nurses’ resilience
Check out our infographic to learn which four cracks in the care environment leaders must repair to rebuild the foundation for a resilient workforce.