The Doctor of Nursing Practice: a national workforce perspective.

In 2004, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) adopted a position statement concerning the future of advanced practice nursing education. A target date of 2015 was articulated as the point by which master's preparation for advanced practice nurses would be replaced by doctoral level education. Seismic shifts in the realities surrounding nursing education and practice have occurred since the proposal to require a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree for entry into advanced practice nursing was proposed.

Analysis & commentary. Unleashing nurse practitioners' potential to deliver primary care and lead teams.

Highly skilled primary care is a hallmark of high-performing health care systems. We examine nurse practitioners' role in delivering primary care and the effects of current restrictions on their ability to practice. By resolving differences between states' individual scope-of-practice regulations, we can fully benefit from the skills of advanced-practice nurses in all fifty states.

Quality and safety education for advanced nursing practice.

The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) project is a national initiative to transform nursing education to integrate quality and safety competencies. This article describes a two-year process to generate educational objectives related to quality and safety competency development in graduate programs that prepare advanced practice nurses in clinical roles. Knowledge, skills, and attitudes for each of 6 competencies are proposed to stimulate development of teaching strategies in programs preparing the next generation of advanced practice nurses.

Assessing quality and safety competencies of graduating prelicensure nursing students.

The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) project is focused on enhancing nursing curricula and fostering faculty development to support student achievement of quality and safety competencies. The purpose of this descriptive study was to assess student perspectives of quality and safety content in their nursing programs along with self-reported levels of preparedness and perceived importance of the 6 QSEN competencies. Graduating students (n = 565) from 17 US schools of nursing completed an electronic student evaluation survey.

Improving quality and safety education: The QSEN Learning Collaborative.

As part of a national initiative to improve quality and safety education in prelicensure nursing programs, 15 schools participated in a 15-month learning collaborative sponsored by Quality and Safety Education for Nurses, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This article presents the rationale, design, activities, and outcomes of the collaborative. Collaborative members revised curricula, developed new teaching strategies, and established the foundation for future faculty development efforts to advance teaching of quality and safety concepts in nursing education.

Current assessments of quality and safety education in nursing.

Concerns about the quality and safety of health care have changed practice expectations and created a mandate for change in the preparation of health care professionals. The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses project team conducted a survey to assess current levels of integration of quality and safety content in pre-licensure nursing curricula. Views of 195 nursing program leaders are presented, including information about satisfaction with faculty expertise and student competency development related to 6 domains that define quality and safety content: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics.

Quality and Safety Education for Nurses.

Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) addresses the challenge of preparing nurses with the competencies necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of the health care systems in which they work. The QSEN faculty members adapted the Institute of Medicine(1) competencies for nursing (patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics), proposing definitions that could describe essential features of what it means to be a competent and respected nurse. Using the competency definitions, the authors propose statements of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) for each competency that should be developed during pre-licensure nursing education.

The ethics of using quality improvement methods in health care.

Quality improvement (QI) activities can improve health care but must be conducted ethically. The Hastings Center convened leaders and scholars to address ethical requirements for QI and their relationship to regulations protecting human subjects of research. The group defined QI as systematic, data-guided activities designed to bring about immediate improvements in health care delivery in particular settings and concluded that QI is an intrinsic part of normal health care operations.

Reflections on the doctorate of nursing practice.

A debate is currently raging in many academic nursing circles about a new degree, the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP). The degree is envisioned as the terminal degree in the discipline that focuses on clinical practice, and it is proposed to supplant the master's degree by 2015. There are a number of driving forces fueling the proposed change, including the hoped-for parity it will create with other health care disciplines and the potential for addressing the complexity of today's health care system.

A present-day academic perspective on the Carolina nursing experience: building on the past, shaping the future.

Past, present, and future models of academic-service collaboration are described and projected from an academic perspective. The features that characterize academic-service partnerships during the history of nursing education in America, the goals that drove faculty and academic leaders to engage or disengage in earlier partnerships, and new forms of emerging partnerships are presented, along with a discussion of their importance in the context of environmental change. The foundation for building the Carolina Model between the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina Hospitals is a prototype for extending future academic-service initiatives.