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NURSES: MANY ROLES, ONE PROFESSION
National Nurses Week 2005 Highlights Contributions and Future of the Profession

Silver Spring, MD – The American Nurses Association (ANA) has announced the theme of National Nurses Week 2005, “Nurses: Many Roles One Profession.” National Nurses Week is celebrated annually from May 6, also known as National Nurses Day, through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.

“This year’s theme underscores the breadth of directions that a nurse’s career may take,” said ANA president Barbara Blakeney, MS, RN. “Although nurses historically have provided hands-on patient care at the bedside – and will continue to do so – nurses also are deeply involved in health education, research, business and public policy,” she added.

Registered nurses (RNs) represent the largest, single component of the health care profession with an estimated 2.7 million RNs in the United States. According to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. currently has a nurse shortage of nearly 150,000 RNs and will have a shortage of more than 800,000 RNs by the year 2020.

“One of the goals of National Nurses Week is to remind the public of the critical role that nurses play,” said Linda Stierle, MSN, RN, CNAA,BC, ANA’s chief executive officer. “However, it also is important to point out what nurses need to provide top notch patient care,” she added.

In fiscal year (FY) 2005, the nursing community successfully lobbied for a 6 percent increase in overall funding for nurse workforce developments programs ($151 million). Those programs include student loan and scholarship programs and the Nurse Reinvestment Act. The president’s budget proposal for FY 2006, however, cuts overall funding for nurse workforce development programs by $1 million with advanced nursing education funds facing a $15 million cut.

Advanced nursing education is particularly important to increase the number of qualified nursing faculty available to educate the next generation of nurses, as well as to provide specialized education for growing areas of nursing need, such as geriatrics.

The number of Americans age 65 and older is projected to grow from about 35 million today to more than 70 million by 2030. Yet despite older adults’ greater use of health care services, RNs and other health care professionals often are unprepared to provide the specialized care that older patients need. Only one-third of bachelor’s of science in nursing programs require a course in geriatrics and less than one percent of the nation’s practicing RNs are certified as gerontological nurses or geriatric advanced practice RNs.

Recognizing the need for improved care for older adults, experts in nursing and geriatrics joined forces to create the Nurse Competency in Aging (NCA) campaign in 2002. NCA is a five-year initiative funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies (USA) Inc., awarded to ANA through the American Nurses Foundation, representing a strategic alliance among ANA, the American Nurses Credentialing Center and the John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing, New York University, Steinhardt School of Education, Division of Nursing.

The goals of NCA are to: enhance geriatric activities among national specialty nursing associations, provide a web-based comprehensive geriatric nursing resource center and promote gerontological nursing certification.

To date, 26 specialty nursing organizations, representing 186,000 specialty nurses who provide care to more than 17 million older adults have united with NCA to help improve patient care to this growing population.

To learn more about the nursing shortage, go to: www.nursingworld.org/readroom/fsshortage.htm

To learn more about the Nurse Competence in Aging initiative, go to: www.GeroNurseOnline.org.

For more on National Nurses Week, go to: www.nursingworld.org/pressrel/nnw


The American Nurses Association is the only full-service professional organization representing the nation's 2.7 million Registered Nurses (RNs) through its 54 constituent member associations. The ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Congress and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.
 

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