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The IOM Report on the Future of Nursing: What Perioperative Nurses Need to Know
RENAE N. BATTI[notdef]
E, MN, RN, CNOR
ABSTRACT
The 2010 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, continues to be the most-viewed report in IOM history. Nearly three years after its publication, there are action coalitions of nursing and non-nursing agencies in 50 states and the District of Columbia collaborating to move the eight recommendations for action forward. There is much work to do to reshape health care delivery in the United States, and the IOM has identied nurses as key leaders in driving the reform. Every nurse must be educated on the key messages of the IOM report and become involved in moving these recommendations forward as well as in educating others on what needs to be done. AORN and perioperative nurses have a key role in voicing the unique needs of perioperative patients and in ensuring that perioperative patient care is represented in reform activities. AORN J 98 (September 2013) 227-234. AORN, Inc, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aorn .2013.07.007
Key words: Future of Nursing, Institute of Medicine, health care reform, nurse education, nurse residencies.
The nursing profession has more than 3 million members and comprises the largest contingent of health care professionals.1
In 2008, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) jointly launched a two-year initiative to respond to national concerns about delivering quality health care to all and how the role of nurses could be leveraged to facilitate that effort.2 The IOM appointed an 18-member committee, chaired by former US Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, PhD, to form the RWJF Initiative on the Future of Nursing. The committee members were charged with developing
an evidence-based report on the ability of nursing to meet the anticipated demands of health care reform and with identifying actions that would improve the quality of patient care as well as manage costs.2 This committee of nurses and non-nurses reached the conclusion that nursesare uniquely qualied to coordinate complexcare for an increasingly wider range of patients because theirregular, close proximity to patients and scientic understanding of care processes across the continuum of care give them a unique ability to act as partners with...