Maryjoan Ladden, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

There is near-universal agreement among health care stakeholders and experts that the country needs to grow the number of primary care providers. If the health care system is to meet the growing demand for care that will result from the greying of the Baby Boomers and the influx of millions of newly insured Americans, we're going to need a bigger, better-prepared health care workforce.

That’s a point the 2010 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, made very clearly with respect to nurses. That landmark report also pointed out that health care is becoming increasingly complex as our understanding of illness grows and as the tools and systems we have available to combat it change and evolve.

The National League for Nursing (NLN) last week announced the launch of a new program that will focus on improving the transition of new nurses from education to practice. The “Accelerating to Practice” program is the inaugural program of NLN’s Center for Academic and Clinical Transitions.

A team of experts from nursing education and the nation’s leading hospitals and health systems will draw on existing research to define the competencies new nurses need to be successful on the job. They will develop program courses and content that will be disseminated to the field for implementation in college curricula and/or new staff orientations by 2015.

“The demands placed on today's practicing nurses are intensifying, with sicker patients, more complicated treatments, and electronic medical records all adding new layers of complexity to basic nursing care,” NLN CEO Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN, said in a news release. The NLN Center for Academic and Clinical Transitions “will build a bridge between those providing nursing education and those directing nurses in practice. Together, we can develop the solutions and tools today's students need to flourish in this demanding field.”

The NLN Center for Academic and Clinical Transitions is supported by grants from Laerdal Medical and Wolters Kluwer Health. 

Read a news release about the program.

Have you signed up to receive Sharing Nursing’s Knowledge? The monthly Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) e-newsletter will keep you up to date on the work of RWJF’s nursing programs, and the latest news, research, and trends relating to academic progression, leadership, and other critically important nursing issues. These are some of the stories in the September issue:

Wanted: Young Nurse Faculty
Nearly three-quarters of full-time nurse faculty are 50 and older, and the nurse faculty workforce is on the brink of a mass retirement. Most young nurses have chosen to work in other settings, and the insufficient number of young nurse faculty threatens to exacerbate the looming nurse shortage. Read about what is stopping young nurses from entering academia, and how RWJF programs are encouraging faculty careers.

RWJF Fellow Tapped to Head New Diversity Initiative in California
RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows alumna Mary Lou de Leon Siantz was tapped in June to head up the Center for the Advancement of Multicultural Perspectives on Science (CAMPOS) at the University of California, Davis, which aims to increase the participation of women, and Latinas in particular, in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. The appointment of a Latina nurse to this high-profile position calls attention to the often overlooked fact that science undergirds the nursing profession, and to the valuable role that women, and Latinas, play in scientific endeavors.

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Pamela A. Kulbok, DNSc, RN, PHCNS-BC, FAAN, is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow. She is the Theresa A. Thomas Professor of Nursing and a professor of public health sciences at the University of Virginia, chair of the Department of Family, Community, and Mental Health Systems, and coordinator of the public health nursing leadership track of the master’s in nursing program.

With the recent release of second edition of the Public Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice (American Nurses Association, 2013), now is a perfect time to reflect on the past and look toward the future of public health nursing (PHN). Public health nurses have always focused on improving the health of populations through health promotion and disease prevention. Since the establishment of visiting nursing in Boston and the Henry Street Settlement in New York City in the late 1800s, public health nurses have worked with families and communities in schools and homes, with immigrant populations in industrialized cities, and with rural communities to address challenging social conditions and to promote the health of the public.

It was evident with the founding of the National Organization of Public Health Nurses in 1912 that “something must be done” to prepare nurses with a broader education and emphasis on social conditions and prevention. Today, more than ever before, when health care in the United States is shifting its emphasis from an illness care system to one focused on health promotion and prevention, we need public health nurse generalists and advance practice public health nurses prepared to lead health care reform. 

Around the country, print, broadcast, and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows, alumni, and grantees. Some recent examples:

People who will be newly eligible for Medicaid after expansion under the Affordable Care Act will be younger and healthier than those currently enrolled in the program, according to a study by RWJF Clinical Scholars alumna Tammy Chang, MD, MPH, and program site co-director Matthew Davis, MD, MAPP. The researchers found that the new Medicaid enrollees will also be less likely to be obese or to suffer from depression, although more of them will be smokers and drinkers. Among the outlets to report on the findings: Reuters, Kaiser Health News, NBC News, NPR’s Shots blog, and Medpage Today.

Medpage Today reports on a study led by RWJF Physician Faculty Scholars alumnus Craig Newgard, MD, MPH, finding that nearly one-third of patients sent to major trauma centers by first responders did not need that level of care and could have been sent elsewhere for diagnosis and treatment. This “overtriaging" raises per-patient health care costs by as much as 40 percent, the study finds. Read more about it.

While in Australia for a conference on reforming health care systems to meet the challenges of aging populations, RWJF Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program alumna Alicia Arbaje, MD, MPH, sat down for two interviews—one with The Australian Financial Review on how stereotypes about aging are changing, and one with Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio about transitional care and reducing readmissions among older adults after they leave hospitals. Read a post Arbaje wrote for the RWJF Human Capital Blog about navigating care across settings and the role of caregivers.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) recently released three new videos about the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, a national initiative of RWJF and AARP to implement recommendations from the Institute of Medicine’s Future of Nursing report.

The first video describes the Campaign’s history and goals, as well as the work of its Action Coalitions, which are working in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They have been harnessing the power of nursing to generate real, transformational change for the country’s health care system.

RWJF also produced video interviews with Campaign for Action co-directors Susan B. Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, RWJF’s senior adviser for nursing, and Susan Reinhard, PhD, RN, AARP’s senior vice president for public policy, in which they discuss their careers and their roles with the Campaign for Action.

Learn more and watch the videos.

Robin Whittemore, PhD, APRN, FAAN, is an associate professor at Yale School of Nursing. Whittemore has received national and international recognition for her work in behavioral interventions for type 1 and type 2 diabetes. One focus of her work has been to examine ways to improve access to health programs for vulnerable high-risk populations. She is the primary investigator on a study funded by the RWJF Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative to prevent diabetes among at-risk adults in public housing. This post originally appeared on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Partnership for Action blog.

Minority adults are at a disproportionate risk for developing type 2 diabetes, a challenging illness to manage that is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the U.S. Evidence indicates that lifestyle change programs, which incorporate healthy eating, physical activity and modest weight loss, can prevent or delay the development of type 2 diabetes. Yet, access to diabetes prevention programs is limited, particularly among minority and low-income adults.

To help address the issues with access to diabetes prevention programs, we designed a study to link existing community resources—public housing communities and a homecare agency— to minority and low-income adults at-risk for type 2 diabetes. Public housing communities provide housing at reduced rental costs for families of low socioeconomic status. We chose this setting because these communities often have the space and personnel to support a community-based program. The homecare agency consists of nurses who monitor and implement healthcare in a home environment, and are trusted health professionals in public housing communities.

The Institute of Medicine report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, recommended that nurses be empowered and prepared to take leadership roles, becoming full partners in hospitals and other health care settings to redesign health care in the United States.

In this video, produced by the New Jersey Action Coalition, Dave Knowlton, president and CEO of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, and Robert Wise, president and CEO of the Hunterdon Healthcare System, talk about the importance of having nurses in leadership positions on hospital boards.

This is part of the September 2013 issue of Sharing Nursing's Knowledge.

More New Nurse Practitioners Heading to Primary Care

Two recent analyses of workforce data offer new insights into the role nurse practitioners (NPs) are likely to play in combating the coming shortage of primary care providers in the U.S.

The first analysis, commissioned by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and released in August, finds that slightly more than half the nation’s nurse practitioners are practicing primary care. In all, 55,625 of the nation’s 106,073 nurse practitioners are in primary care, according to data drawn from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ National Provider Identifier database.

At the same time, an analysis of graduation trends conducted by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow alumna Debra Barksdale, PhD, RN, FAAN, and colleagues, finds that graduation rates for NPs suggest more help is on the way. According to Barksdale’s reading of data from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing and the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties, 84 percent of NP graduates in 2012 were prepared in primary care. That represents an eye-catching 18.6 percent increase from 2011 to 2012.