Frontiers: Crisis in Caring: Addressing the Nursing Shortage

Lead article by Janet F. Quinn, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN

Softbound, 44 pp, Winter 2002, ISSN 0748-8157
Order code: WWW1-J473,
Price:$29.00

In this new issue of Frontiers, Janet Quinn, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN, gets to the heart of the growing nursing shortage epidemic, and offers healthcare executives her answer to retaining and attracting nurses: create a healing environment in which nurses can work to care for patients.

In the ensuing commentaries, James Skogsbergh, president and CEO of Advocate Health Care in Oak Brook, Illinois, also recommends that hospitals seek to "develop a culture at the nursing-unit level that sustains, nurtures, and recognizes its nurses." He supports the existing magnet certification process and believes this method is the means by which hospitals can retain nurses.

Sharon Lee, vice president of nursing and patient care at St. Luke's Regional Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, gives the reader a unique front-line perspective. She, too, is an advocate of the magnet hospital approach and recommends that hospitals examine work redesign, pay attention to staffing based on patient acuity, collaborate with schools of nursing, and work to increase the numbers of men and minorities in nursing.

Edward O'Neil, director of the Center for the Health Professions at the University of California at San Francisco, further examines Nightingale units, both their advantages and disadvantages.