INHL and the 21st Century Challege

The need for strong nursing leadership has never been greater. Professional nurses are struggling to provide comprehensive, professional care in healthcare systems that are undergoing a magnitude of change that is nothing short of revolutionary. More than ever, nurses and their colleagues in all of the healthcare disciplines are looking to nursing leaders to help them craft new systems and environments that support excellence in patient care. The Institute for Nursing Healthcare Leadership (INHL) was established to help realize these aims.

Who Will Provide the Care?

An international nursing shortage of unprecedented proportions will increase the pace of change and the attendant need for creative leadership over the next couple of decades. In the United States, studies estimate a shortfall of 400,000 registered nurses by the year 2020. The shortage will hit hardest just as 78 million Americans of the “baby-boom” generation begin to reach retirement age, which will cause the nation’s need for healthcare services to soar.

Other industrialized nations face similar demographic pressures. In underdeveloped nations with growing populations, poverty, and epidemic disease, the severe shortage of healthcare providers is exacerbated by an exodus of experienced professional nurses seeking better pay in industrialized nations.

These projections are of grave concern. A nursing provider shortage at this level, superimposed on healthcare systems that are already facing enormous financial pressures, would cripple existing systems of care globally.

Integrated, Collaborative Solutions

As the largest healthcare profession worldwide, nursing must take an international role in facing these issues and in developing solutions. In multiple settings, nurses are in closest proximity to patients and families or are the sole healthcare providers. Nurses are challenged to:

] Form partnerships with other stakeholders in the healthcare arena, including patients and families, public policy-makers, legislators, and colleagues in other disciplines;

] Bring the vast body of nursing knowledge forward into changed healthcare systems; and

] Support unswervingly the current generation of nursing leaders and develop the next one.