Expert Interviews, Guides & Advocacy Issues in Nursing

Recent survey results show that a quarter to half of nurses feel emotionally drained, used up, fatigued, and burned out several times a week, or even every day (NCSBN 2023). Nearly a fifth of the current nursing workforce has stated their intent to leave the profession by 2027, with a significant portion of those statements coming from nurses under 40. With an aging population and an ongoing need for healthcare services, America can’t afford to lose this much of its vital nursing workforce.

Despite Nightingale’s beliefs that nursing was the duty of “proper ladies,” the dire need for skilled nursing care led to the proliferation of nursing programs that predominantly served poor and working-class women who wanted a respectable profession. In fact, nursing education in America was founded in part to empower and employ lower-class women.

In the fast-paced world of healthcare, nurses often find themselves at the epicenter of relentless demands. Extended shifts, emotionally charged situations, and the ever-present call of duty can make achieving a nurse work-life balance seem elusive.

Malpractice insurance, also known as professional liability insurance, protects nurse practitioners (NPs) from claims of negligence or incompetence, covering some or all of the costs of defending against such claims—and it’s more important than ever.

The importance and power of nurse practitioners coming together under a common goal is hard to overstate. Whether you’re a student, novice, expert, or veteran nurse practitioner, conferences can be an invaluable resource to your career.

If you are a nurse practitioner (NP) in one of the 23 states that do not have full practice authority, then you will need a collaborative agreement. These agreements, which can go by several different names, detail the working relationship between an NP and a supervising physician.

Nurse practitioner residency programs, sometimes referred to as fellowship programs, are postgraduate programs designed to help NPs transition to practice, particularly in specialty areas. Many residency programs are geared towards Advanced Practice Providers (APPs), a group that includes NPs and physician assistants (PAs), reinforcing the growing trend of interprofessional collaboration in care teams.

While a nursing job in the US is often advertised as the start of a new American dream for these nurses, many find the experience a nightmare instead, thanks to the profoundly exploitative business practices many international recruitment agencies employ.

The prevailing powers of the age write history. Because patriarchy has predominated for the past 12,000 years, that also means most of modern history was arbitrated and recorded by men. Due to this prevailing power structure, the erasure of women’s contributions to science, technology, and medicine is well-documented, and there are indeed too many examples to quantify. Famous cases of men taking credit for women’s discoveries are also exceedingly common, as is the general disregard that academics have shown toward caring roles, professions which include nursing, social work, and teaching.

Coined in 2019 by the Nursing Executive Centre of the Advisory Board, the experience-complexity gap describes the dangerously widening difference between the average nurse’s knowledge today and the rapidly increasing complexity of the patients they serve and the technology they must oversee. Put simply, patients have never been sicker, the technology required to keep them alive has never been more involved, and the nurses overseeing their care have never been less knowledgeable and experienced–through no fault of their own.