Implementation of the IOM Future of Nursing Essay

Benchmarking Assignment-Implementation of the IOM Future of Nursing Report
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The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) primary mandate is in improving health and health care for all American citizens. RWJF formed a committee that coordinated its efforts with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to develop a report that addressed issues in nursing. The committee recognized that nurses support the largest part of the entire health care system in the US (Hassmiller, 2010). This implies that issues that affect nursing would greatly impact on the future of the entire health care system in the US. The two organizations embarked on a mission to hold meetings with numerous stakeholders gathering data from both the private and public sector healthcare players. They held 3 public forums to gather and perform an analysis of nursing related data. The forum addressed acute care issues, the second forum touched on community health, public health, and long term care. The third forum addressed nursing education issues (ISNA Bulletin, 2011).
The forums culminated in a report that stressed on four issues. It recommended nurses to engage the entirety of their training in practice, to acquire the highest standards of training, to achieve competency in inter-professional collaboration, and to become active players in policy and planning with mastery in data collection and information infrastructure (Odom-Forren, 2011). The forum on acute care focused on issues relating to safety, technology and an inter-professional practices in acute care. It encouraged education and practice settings to ensure that nurses facilitate improved outcomes and reduced errors as part of maintaining safety. The forum advocated for nurses to offer adequate time with patients, leadership in acute care for improved outcomes, efficiency and time savings through technology, inter-professional teamwork and emphasis on innovations (ISNA Bulletin, 2011).
The forum on community based care narrowed down on the nurses’ role in providing primary, long term and public health in the community setting (ISNA Bulletin, 2011).
The community care forum focused on issues to encourage nurses to develop awareness on issues such as handling environmental influences and forging partnerships with community entities such as schools. It also centered on using evidence based strategies to reduce occurrence of diseases and using technology to collect health information necessary in enhancing community health. Other issues included facilitating improved knowledge in social factors that impact health such as culture, ensuring accountability, developing nurses’ communication competencies and their capacity to handle public health issues such as immunizations, disasters and communicable diseases. The forum also addressed the need to develop nurses’ competence in the primary and long term care being able to exercise leadership (ISNA ...