Nurse-Led Models of Care: Practice and Policy to Support Aging in Place.

Purpose: Research demonstrates that aging in place is the goal of most adults aged >50 years. Unfortunately, multiple barriers to aging in place continue to exist, especially for vulnerable populations. Achieving this goal will require innovative nurse-led models of care and new policies for RN reimbursement.

Leveraging Regulation and Legislation to Improve the Care of Older Adults Through Home- and Community-Based Services.

An increase in demand for health care services for older adults is being negatively impacted by lack of a sufficient nursing workforce with competence in home- and community-based services (HCBS). The current article examines the unique challenges and opportunities in caring for older adults in HCBS settings, outlines the core competencies nurses must possess to provide this care, and proposes strategies to leverage legislative and regulatory initiatives to incorporate these competencies into nursing education and practice. Examining the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's Essentials Competencies through the HCBS lens, it is an ideal time to create a roadmap for nurses in practice, policy, and education to shape the health care workforce to meet the needs of a diverse and vulnerable population: older adults who depend on home- and community-based care for maintaining or improving their health outcomes and overall quality of life.

Teaching nursing within a population health context: From concept to exemplars.

As researchers in the health sciences improve their understanding of the underlying causes of poor health to include non-medical factors, nursing practice must expand and adapt to enable nurses to effectively contribute to population health improvement. The concept of population health has been incorporated into the current American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education (2021) as a set of competencies for nurses at entry and advanced levels. This article provides a description of these competencies, and exemplars of how to include them meaningfully in nursing curricula at the entry level.

Congressional Laws Provide Resources to Support Family Caregivers.

Approximately 70% of adults aged ≥65 years will need some type of long-term care services, including unpaid care from relatives, friends, or partners. More than 53 million American adults provide upwards of $500 billion in unpaid health care as family caregivers. In 2018, Congress enacted two laws supporting family caregiving: the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, and Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act and the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren (SGRG) Act, directing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop a national caregiving strategy.

Leadership Development Activities and Benefits From the Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellows Program.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellows (RJWF-ENF) program was the gold standard for executive career development of nurse leaders from 1997 to 2017. With more than two decades of experience, ENF program leaders encouraged the fellows to "trust the process" during the difficult times of leadership development and value the collegial relationships they could develop with other nurse fellows. This article describes the benefits of the Action Learning Model for leadership development through the experience of the Boom-X-2K action learning team from the RWJF-ENF final cohort of 2014-2017.

Integrating the ELNEC undergraduate curriculum into Nursing Education: Lessons learned.

Nurses are called to lead and transform palliative care, compelling nurse educators to provide the requisite education to do so. All nursing students need to learn primary palliative care to be prepared to care for the growing number of patients with serious illness and their families. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Competencies And Recommendations for Educating nursing Students (CARES) document outlines 17 palliative care competencies to be attained by graduation from their pre-licensure programs.

The Shillam-Clipper Leadership Minimum Demographic Data Set: A Tool for Advancing Healthcare Research.

Objective: The purpose of this research study was to develop an innovative, standardized taxonomy for leader demographic data to gather consistent and comparable data across healthcare leadership studies.

Background: Minimum data sets help ensure consistent data collection strategies for standardized comparison among similar variables across settings. A standardized approach to collecting demographic data of healthcare workforce leadership will provide the structure necessary for researchers to more adequately compare the role of demographic characteristics in research outcomes.

Development of the Leadership Influence Self-Assessment (LISA©) instrument.

Purpose: This study aims to describe the development and psychometric evaluation of the Leadership Influence Self-Assessment (LISA©) tool.

Background: LISA© was designed to help nurse leaders assess and enhance their influence capacity by measuring influence traits and practices and identifying areas of strength and weakness.

Methods: Concepts identified in the Adams Influence Model and input from content experts guided the development of 145 items for testing.

Leadership Influence: A Core Foundation for Advocacy.

As the largest segment of the health care workforce, nurses have the greatest potential for advancing systems and services to improve health care delivery in the United States. This article presents a framework for nurse administrators to use in developing direct care nurses in their leadership influence competency as a means of increasing their advocacy potential. A systematic review resulted in establishing a nurse leadership influence framework based on the Kouzes and Posner leadership model.

An Ecological Understanding of Caregiver Experiences in Palliative Care.

Palliative care is specialized health care to improve quality of life for patients with serious illness and their families through prevention and relief of suffering. A Palliative Care Institute was held in western Washington to capture community voices about diverse needs, strengths, and opportunities for improvement of palliative care. Researchers employed qualitative methods to obtain thematic data, provide real-time analysis, and engage in a multivoting technique to reflect stakeholder interest in individual themes and prioritize larger group interests.

Hartford Gerontological Nursing Leaders: From Funding Initiative to National Organization.

In 2000, the John A. Hartford Foundation established the Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity Program initiative, acknowledging nursing's key role in the care of the growing population of older adults. This program has supported 249 nurse scientists with pre- and postdoctoral awards.

Development and implementation of a peer mentoring program for early career gerontological faculty.

Purpose: The Hartford Gerontological Nursing Leaders (HGNL) formerly known as the Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity Initiative (BAGNC), in conjunction with the National Hartford Centers of Gerontological Nursing Excellence (NHCGNE), developed and executed a peer mentoring program beginning in 2011 to enhance both (a) the experience of newly selected scholars and fellows to the NHCGNE and (b) the ongoing professional development of HGNL members. The purpose of this article is to describe key strategies used to develop and execute the peer mentoring program and to present formative program evaluation.

Design: The program was launched in January 2011 with seven peer mentor and mentee matches.

Online biostatistics: evidence-based curriculum for master's nursing education.

Rapid changes in health care delivery require nurses to attain advanced knowledge, skills, and attitudes in biostatistics to provide high-quality, safe patient care. Advances in educational technologies support the delivery of graduate nursing education in online formats. Given the diversity of learning styles among graduate nursing students and the specific challenges in delivering biostatistics content in traditional formats, it is vital to include different delivery formats to engage and meet the learning needs of graduate nursing students who take biostatistics courses online.

Faith community nurses & brown bag events help older adults manage meds.

Brown Bag Medication Review (BBMR) events, traditionally offered by pharmacists, improve medication management for older adults. This study incorporated faith community nurses (FCNs) in BBMR events, hypothesizing that support by the FCN during and following the event would reduce medication related problems and improve medication self-care practices of older adults. Results describe and support the role of FCNs in brown bag events.

Fibromyalgia symptoms, physical function, and comorbidity in middle-aged and older adults.

Background: Multiple studies report on symptoms or physical function in people with fibromyalgia; however, limited studies have been focused on older adults with fibromyalgia.

Objectives: The aims of this study were to describe the occurrence, frequency, severity, and distress of symptoms and to examine differences in symptoms and physical function between a middle-aged and an older group.

Method: Questionnaires were mailed to a random sample of 533 adults with fibromyalgia over 50 years of age, using a large tertiary care database.