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:

The New Jersey Nursing Initiative (NJNI), a project of RWJF and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Foundation, has graduated its first cohort of doctorally prepared nurses, NJ Spotlight reports. The new graduates are on track to become nursing professors, to help address New Jersey’s staggering 10.5 percent nurse faculty vacancy rate. Read more about the New Jersey Nursing Scholars who graduate this month.

In an op-ed for the Daily Journal, New Jersey Nursing Scholar Marlin Gross, MSN, APN, NP-C, writes, “I’m able to combine my love of nursing practice and education because NJNI put me on a fast track to a master’s degree in nursing… I also benefited from the program’s professional and personal development activities and its many mentoring and networking opportunities. But most importantly, NJNI helped me re-imagine my future. I now see myself as an emerging nurse leader and plan to enroll in a doctorate program in the fall to realize that vision.” Robert P. Wise, FACHE, a member of NJNI’s Leadership Council, also wrote about NJNI in an op-ed for The Times of Trenton.

Insight Into Diversity reports on the Dental Pipeline National Learning Institute, an RWJF-funded project led by the American Dental Education Association and the University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry. It is funding dental schools to create new recruitment projects that will help increase the number of underrepresented students at their institutions. Read a post on the RWJF Human Capital Blog by National Learning Institute Director Paul Glassman.

Janice “Nisa” Bruce is the director of San Juan College Department of Nursing in Farmington, NM.  She has a BA from San Francisco State University, a BSN from East Central University Oklahoma, and an MS from the University of Oklahoma, College of Nursing.  She has been in nursing higher education since 1988, and is completing her 20th year at San Juan College.

We began our New Mexico community college-university collaboration in late 2009 with the publication of a university-generated white paper articulating the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendations citing the need for more baccalaureate nurses to meet the health care needs of the 21st century. Of course to community college associate degree educators, that proposal smacked of the old entry level into practice argument that has divided nursing educators for decades. We gnashed our teeth, we complained to each other, we argued that the literature was flawed. Then we got busy. And the New Mexico Nursing Education Consortium (NMNEC) was born.

Little by little, over time, the pieces have fallen into place. 

Ann Marie P. Mauro, PhD, RN, CNL, CNE, is a clinical associate professor, fellow with the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing, and the program liaison and project director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Careers in Nursing scholarship program at the New York University (NYU) College of Nursing, which has made extensive use of simulation. This is part of a series of posts for National Nurses Week, highlighting how nurses are driving quality and innovation in patient care.

For students in the health professions, the beauty of simulation is the ability to apply their critical thinking and assessment skills in a safe environment where they can learn without fear of harming a patient. Sometimes I think people learn much better from their mistakes. While simulation does not completely replace traditional clinical experiences, it is a great teaching strategy to help standardize students’ learning experiences, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

You can achieve targeted learning outcomes for students who have the opportunity to work with patients with specific health concerns. When we take students into a traditional clinical setting, we do not have control over which patients might be available and what students might be able to do. It is getting particularly challenging not only to find clinical sites, because of competition among schools, but to deal with health care organizations that have transitioned to electronic health records and electronic medication administration records, which are difficult for faculty and students to access. Furthermore, it is time-consuming and costly for faculty to be trained on different systems.

Adejoke Ayoola, PhD, RN, is an assistant professor with the Calvin College Department of Nursing in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholar.  This is part of a series of posts looking at diversity in the health care workforce.

Nurses in the United States are caring for a progressively more diverse population. In 2008, ethnic and racial minority groups accounted for about one third of the United States population. According to the United States Census Bureau, people from ethnic and racial minority groups— namely Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander—will together outnumber non-Hispanics over the next four decades. Minorities, now 37 percent of the U.S. population, are projected to comprise 57 percent of the population in 2060. The total minority population would more than double, from 116.2 million to 241.3 million over the period (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012).  So it is essential to have a nursing workforce that will reflect the population of the United States so as to deliver cost-effective, quality care and improve patients’ satisfaction and health outcomes, especially among ethnic and racial minorities.

The importance of promoting diversity in the nursing workforce is acknowledged by various nursing agencies and health organizations, including the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN, 2013).  Diversity in the nursing workforce provides opportunities to deliver quality care which promotes patient satisfaction and emotional well-being. 

When I take my students to the hospital for their clinical rotations in acute care, I often assign those who are Spanish-speakers to Spanish-speaking patients. It has often been a win-win situation for both my students and the patients. Recently we cared for a Hispanic patient who did not speak English and had just given birth to her first baby. Her face lit up when my student spoke to her in Spanish! There was no one else with the woman, so the student’s ability to interact with her in a language she understood made a big difference. We noticed positive progress in the patient’s emotional and physical state as a result of her interaction with the student during the shift.

Sherry Rogers, RN, MSN, NEA-BC, is Chief Nursing Officer at Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan, Maine. She is co-chair of Maine Partners in Nursing Education and Practice, a project of Partners Investing in Nursing’s Future, which is a partnership of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the Northwest Health Foundation.

Maine is a rural state with the least dense population among states east of the Mississippi. The greater Portland area in southern Maine contains 20 percent of Maine’s residents, while northern counties have fewer than one person per square mile. A drive from the state’s southernmost hospital to its northernmost school of nursing would take approximately seven hours by car. The rural nature of Maine provides unique challenges to the state’s 13 nursing schools when it comes to placing students in their needed clinical hospital rotations. I am helping to oversee a program aimed at overcoming those student placement challenges.

Our project, called Maine Partners in Nursing Education and Practice, partnered with the Maine Department of Labor to link the state’s schools of nursing with hospital clinical rotation sites by implementing a Maine region of the Massachusetts Centralized Clinical Placement (MCCP), a web-based program that streamlines the scheduling and management of clinical nursing education placements between health care organizations and nursing programs. The system is owned by the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education (DHE) and can be viewed at www.mcnplacement.org.

This is part of a series introducing programs in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Human Capital Portfolio.

A few years ago, Natasha Leland was a professional opera singer. John Pederzolli was in financial sales. And Blake Smith was a high school soccer coach. Today, all are nurses, thanks to support from New Careers in Nursing (NCIN), a program of RWJF and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.

Since 2008, NCIN has helped facilitate more than 2,700 scholarships for second career nurses entering accelerated degree programs. Thanks to resources and support from NCIN, these students—who are from groups underrepresented in nursing—are quickly entering the workforce, ready to provide high quality patient care and become leaders in the profession.

Before realizing their dreams of becoming nurses, NCIN scholars had a wide variety of professions: customer service, teacher, aviation safety professional, and even professional clown, among others. Each Scholar brings unique life and real-world experience to his or her new career. That makes them well-equipped to handle a fast-paced training program, and the demands of the profession.

Jean Giddens, PhD, RN FAAN, is professor & executive dean at the College of Nursing, University of New Mexico and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow. This post is part of the "Health Care in 2013" series.

The beginning of every year often serves as a time to reflect on events from the previous year, to consider opportunities that lie ahead, and make resolutions for things one wishes to accomplish.  As an educator, my New Year’s resolution for the United States health care system is to work toward a more efficient system for educating nurses. 

Nursing education represents a critical link among many efforts to improve the nation’s health care.  Our education system currently lacks the capacity to meet the current and future workforce demands, particularly in rural states.  Goals such as increasing workforce diversity, creating resource efficiency in education processes (particularly for advanced practice nursing education), and enhancing education systems leading to a more educated workforce are among the highest priorities for action in 2013.

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) last week released preliminary findings from its annual nursing education survey showing an increase in enrollment in all types of nursing programs from 2011 to 2012.

The AACN survey finds a 3.5 percent increase in entry-level Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program enrollment, and a significant increase in the number of students in graduate nursing programs. Master’s degree nursing programs reported an 8.2 percent increase in enrollment, while Doctor of Nursing Practice program enrollment increased by 19.6 percent and PhD/DNS programs by 1.3 percent.

Baccalaureate degree completion programs (RN to BSN) saw an increase in enrollment of 22.2 percent, which marks the 10th year of enrollment increases for these programs.

Though enrollment has increased, the survey finds that many potential students are still being turned away. In 2012, more than 52,000 qualified applicants were turned away from entry-level baccalaureate nursing programs because of a shortage of clinical placement sites, faculty, and funding.

In addition to its annual survey, AACN also released data showing that baccalaureate nursing graduates are at least twice as likely as those in other fields to have a job at the time they graduate. The survey also finds hospitals and other employers prefer hiring new nurses with BSNs.

One goal of the Institute of Medicine report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, is that 80 percent of nurses have bachelor’s degrees or higher by the year 2020.

Learn more about the survey results.

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.  Here are descriptions of some of the stories in the December issue:

Nurse Heroes
In the weeks after Hurricane Sandy pummeled shores in New York and New Jersey, a number of stories surfaced about the critical role nurses played during and after the storm hit. Nurses are gaining widespread recognition for their emergency-relief work—even a nod from President Obama. But the contributions of nurses working as emergency responders is not new.  Read the story.

CDC Recognizes Nurse Leader for Groundbreaking Research on Domestic Violence
RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholar program director Jacquelyn Campbell is being hailed as one of the 20 most influential researchers in injury prevention over the last 20 years by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Campbell’s groundbreaking research has shown that nurses can work alongside partners in health care, law enforcement and social work to protect women from the ravages of domestic violence. The school nurse turned domestic violence prevention pioneer is the only nurse to receive the CDC’s prestigious distinction. Read the profile.

Signs of Progress in Addressing New Jersey’s Nurse Faculty Shortage
Legislators had praise and questions for the health, business and academic leaders who gathered at the State House in Trenton on Nov. 19 to provide updates on progress made so far by the New Jersey Nursing Initiative (NJNI)—a multi-year, multi-million-dollar project of RWJF and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Foundation that is working to fill nurse faculty positions in the state. Since its inception in 2009, NJNI’s Faculty Preparation Program has supported 61 New Jersey Nursing Scholars who are pursuing (or have completed) master’s or doctoral degrees that qualify them for nurse faculty positions. Read the story.

Why Nurses Go Back to School
A new study from the RWJF RN Work Project identifies the characteristics and factors that best predict whether nurses will return to school to earn higher degrees. The researchers identified internal and external motivators, and barriers, to advancing nurses’ education.  Learn more.

See the entire December issue here. Sign up to receive Sharing Nursing’s Knowledge here.

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

A study led by RWJF Health & Society Scholars alumna Annice Kim, PhD, finds teens are more likely to buy tobacco products if they are prominently displayed in stores, Reuters reports. The researchers used a virtual reality game in a simulated online convenience store to collect their data. Health Day also reported on the findings.

News coverage of anti-Muslim fringe groups after September 11 “created the misperception they were mainstream organizations, and this perception enabled them to secure funding and build social networks that they may not [have] been able to do otherwise,” RWJF Scholar in Health Policy Research Christopher Bail, PhD, told United Press International about his study, recently published in the American Sociological Review. His findings also received coverage in Yahoo News, the Times Union, and Health Canal, among other outlets.

Nurse.com reports on a study by the RN Work Project that examined the characteristics and motivations that influence registered nurses to pursue bachelor of science in nursing or higher degrees. Read more about the study.

Debbie Chatman Bryant, DNP, RN, assistant director for cancer prevention and control and outreach at the Medical University of South Carolina, was honored at a local ceremony for receiving an RWJF Community Health Leader award. The Post and Courier reports that Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) made a surprise appearance at the event.