Professional Issues in Nursing: Challenges and Opportunities

Today’s nursing students feel immense pressure. K-12 programs often have taught students to be test-oriented, and when successful high school students enter a nursing program, they often quickly learn that the stakes are different and how students “used to study” no longer applies. Today’s nursing students are excited for their future career, but it seems far off compared to the immediate need to pass the NCLEX. As programs across the nation are struggling to secure clinical time and students’ access to patients is more limited, sometimes they struggle to understand the real-world perspective. It is not uncommon for a new nurse today, fully immersed in today’s complex healthcare landscape, to often report that she or he “did not know what to expect.”

Professional Issues in Nursing: Challenges & Opportunities features contemporary and enduring issues in professional nursing. Designed to be used in both pre- and post-licensure nursing programs, the text has an undiluted focus on professional issues in nursing and includes many timely workplace issues, workforce issues, legal and ethical issues, nursing education, and issues related to professional power and furthering the nursing profession. Unlike other “issues and trends” textbooks that cover everything from nursing research to nursing theory, this text is devoted to the “hot topics” of the time which allows students to begin to prepare for the realities of nursing practice.

Each chapter begins with Learning Objectives and an overview of the professional issues being discussed. Multiple perspectives on each issue are then identified in an effort to reflect the diversity of thought found in the literature as well as espoused by experts in the field and varied professional nursing and health care organizations. Discussion Points encourage readers to pause and reflect on specific questions. These questions can be completed by students independently or used as group work in class. The “Consider This” features also encourages active learning, critical thinking, and values clarification by the users. In addition, at least one research study is profiled in every chapter in “Research Study Fuels the Controversy,” an effort to promote evidence-based analysis of the issue. Each chapter concludes with Conclusions about the issues discussed, questions for additional discussion, and a comprehensive and current reference list. Each chapter also includes multiple displays, boxes, and tables to allow for a good reading experience and to help the user visualize important concepts.

Some of the new “hot topics” that this edition focuses on are the use of social media in nursing, teaching clinical reasoning, MOOCs and virtual learning spaces, and academic integrity in nursing education. New or updated content has been added throughout the book to reflect cutting-edge trends in health care and nursing education, including an ever-increasing demand for quality and safety in the workplace for patients as well as workers; workforce projections and changing population demographics; the impact of health care reform; the IOM recommendations put forth in The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health ; changing nursing education paradigms and increasingly virtual learning environments; and the challenges and opportunities, while providing nursing care and nursing education in an increasingly global, rapidly changing, technology-driven world.