Key Messages in the IOM Report Recommendations

Key Messages in the IOM Report Recommendations

The IOM report recommendations on the future of nursing contained four key messages. The first message in the recommendations entails the idea that nurses need to practice to the full extent of their training and qualifications. In this message, the federal and state governments are tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that the rules relating to the nursing practice to the full extent of the training are regulated and updated to ensure that patients receive quality health care services delivery. The second message in the IOM report recommendations entails calling upon nurses to seek advanced education and training through enhanced education system that facilitates flawless academic advancement. The intent of this message is to have sophisticated structuring of nursing education to foster direct and seamless advancement to higher nursing education levels. Improving nursing education system is also essential in equipping the existing and future generation of nurses with competency to provide safe, quality, and patient-oriented care in different health care organizations (Arzouman, 2016).

The third message on the IOM report recommendations is that nurses ought to work as full partners with other health care professionals including physicians in an effort to restructure health care system in the country. Full partnership implies that nurses should be fully accountable and take active roles in the identification of the issues and factors that contribute to wastes in health care, tracking health care improvements, designing and implementing improvement measures, and taking actions to achieve desired goals. As such, it is imperative for nurses to acquire core competency in leadership at all levels of nursing profession to realize the objectives of this message. Nurses are also advised to actively engage in policy areas to help in influencing nursing profession by joining commissions, boards, and committees to advocate for the nurses.

Finally, the message in the report calls for sophisticated management of data and information infrastructure to ensure effective workforce planning and policy development (Arzouman, 2016). The report proposed that the health care system needs to have universal methods of determining the number and type of nursing professionals, where they are employed, their tasks, responsibilities, and activities.  The data will play a significant role of recognizing critical areas that require improvement and used to make future nursing workforce needs and influence changes in the nursing profession.