Analysis of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report: The Future of Nursing

Analysis of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report: The Future of Nursing
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Analysis of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report: The Future of Nursing
Abstract
The Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Report: The Future of Nursing highlighted some four issues that need to be addressed and provided some recommendations on how the nursing practice can be reformed to accommodate the changing healthcare environment. The highlighted issues include nurses’ scope of practice, education, leadership, and data collection and research. The recommendations provided by the IOM report were based on those four issues. Strategies that can be used to implement those recommendations are discussed and some perspectives on the recommendations are shared.
The report recognized that the largest component of the healthcare workforce is made up of nurses, who play a vital role in providing patient care. As such, nurses’ are in a better position to drive healthcare reforms and implement the necessary changes. The report revealed that nurses can improve access to healthcare and improve the value and quality of healthcare. However, the report recognized that for this to happen, a major transformation in the nursing profession was paramount. There were four main issues discussed in the report. The first issue was the nurses’ scope of practice. This would require the intervention of federal and state government to expand the scope of practice for nurses beyond the current standardized one, based, of course, on their training and education. The second issue was the need to transform nursing education parameters. This would involve providing nurses with opportunities to further their education levels. Also, enough training facilities should be created to accommodate qualified, potential nursing students. The third issue was the transformation of nurses’ leadership in healthcare reforms. Nurses provide direct care to patients and as such, they have first-hand experience and knowledge of what patients need. Thus, they should be allowed to participate as full partners in reforming the healthcare system. Their collaboration with physicians and other players in the healthcare industry would bring forth diverse solutions to the complex challenges of healthcare and as a result, patients would be able to receive more patient-centered care. The fourth issue was the improvement of data collection to facilitate effective planning and policymaking. The report indicated that currently, there is a lack of data on the available workforce in the healthcare sector. Thus, there is a need for more robust data on the current workforce and also on the size of the workforce that will be required to meet future healthcare needs.
Recommendations of the Report
The IOM report provided several recommendations, which were based on the four issues discussed above. The first recommendation was the removal of barriers to nurses’ scope of practice, specifically for advanced practice registered nurses (APRN). This recommendation called for the Congress to expand Medicare to cover APRN services, state policymakers to change the regulations on the scope of practice, and the office of personnel management, among others, to make reforms to e...