PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN NURSING. 4TH EDITION

• FURTHERING THE PROFESSION
Chapter 1, Entry Into Practice: The Debate Rages On
Chapter 2, Evidence-Based Practice
Chapter 3, Developing Effective Leaders to Meet 21st Century Health Care Challenges
Chapter 4, Advanced Practice Nursing: Where is the DNP Today?
• II. WORKFORCE ISSUES
Chapter 5, Is There a Nursing Shortage?
Chapter 6, Importing Foreign Nurses
Chapter 7, Unlicensed Assistive Personnel and the Registered Nurse
Chapter 8, Diversity in the Nursing Workforce
• III. WORKPLACE ISSUES
Chapter 9, Mandatory Minimum Staffing Ratios: Are They Working?
Chapter 10, Mandatory Overtime in Nursing: How Much? How Often?
Chapter 11, Violence in Nursing: The Expectations and the Reality
Chapter 12, The Use of Social Media in Nursing: Pitfalls and Opportunities
Chapter 13, Medical Errors: An Ongoing Threat to Quality Health Care
• IV. NURSING EDUCATION ISSUES
Chapter 14, Using Simulation to Teach Nurses
Chapter 15, Can Clinical Reasoning Be Taught?
Chapter 16, New Graduate RN Transition to Practice Programs (Nurse Residencies)
Chapter 17, MOOCS and Virtual Learning Spaces: A Withering of the Traditional Classroom
Chapter 18, Academic Integrity in Nursing Education: Is it Declining?
• V. LEGAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES
Chapter 19, Whistle-Blowing in Nursing
Chapter 20, Impaired Nursing Practice: What Are We Doing About It?
Chapter 21, Collective Bargaining and the Professional Nurse
Chapter 22, Assuring Provider Competence Through Licensure, Continuing Education, and Certification
• VI. PROFESSIONAL POWER
Chapter 23, The Nursing Profession's Historic Struggle to Increase Its Power Base
Chapter 24, Professional Identity and Image
Chapter 25, Nursing, Policy, and Politics: Understanding the Connection, Nurses' Role in the Policy Process
Chapter 26, Nursing's Professional Associations
INDEX

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.

Author
Carol J. Huston MSN, MPA, DPA. President-Elect, International Honor Society of Nursing; Professor, School of Nursing, California State University, Chico, CA.