Registered Nurses as Professionals, Advocates, Innovators, and Collaborative Leaders: Executive Summary.

This article concludes a series that described work completed by the American Nurses Association (ANA) Barriers to RN Scope of Practice Professional Issues Panel (Panel). The Panel has summarized the roles of the registered nurse (RN) as professional, advocate, innovator, and collaborative leader. As professionals, RNs are accountable for their own educational development, growth of their own practice, and execution of their own professional role.

Registered Nurses as Interprofessional Collaborative Partners: Creating Value-Based Outcomes.

State-specific nurse practice acts, a defined registered nurse (RN) scope of practice, and nurse-led initiatives prepare nurses to lead in a meaningful and ethical way within the professional practice setting. However, barriers still exist that challenge the full RN scope of practice. One of these barriers is insufficient interprofessional collaboration among healthcare providers from multiple disciplines.

Registered Nurses as Professionals: Accountability for Education and Practice.

This article explores the theme that, as professionals, all registered nurses (RNs) are accountable for their own educational development and execution of their individual professional role. To assure that RNs perform to the full scope of their practice and impact the highest possible patient outcomes, a standardized educational preparation of RNs at the BSN level is essential, either through initial education or educational progression. The authors support the need for BSN preparation with a brief review of research to identify seminal works that demonstrate the added value, both economically and in terms of patient outcomes, that results when higher percentages of BSN-prepared RNs provide care.

"Just a telephone call away": transforming the nursing profession with telecare and telephone nursing triage.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to examine the Institute of Medicine's recommendations, the National Prevention Council Action Plan, the medical home model, and the nursing standards that drive quality for telephone nursing triage.

Findings: These guidelines require reconceptualizing nursing roles, a commitment to lifelong learning, continued competence, and transformational leadership as demonstrated in a best practice case study.

Conclusion: Given the changing climate of the healthcare system, telephone nurses are capable of improving healthcare delivery in the twenty-first century.