Summit to spotlight R.I. nursing need

With the Affordable Care Act expected to push all but the sickest out of the hospital setting and into community-based care, today’s and tomorrow’s nurses will increasingly team up with other medical professionals to deliver services.
A lecture about a Rhode Island and Massachusetts project that teaches all of those medical professionals how to work together effectively on behalf of the patient will be one of several presentations at “The Rhode Island Summit on the Future of Nursing” scheduled for Sept. 11 and 12 at seven different locations in Providence.
The goal will be to highlight model programs as well as challenges locally, in the context of a broader, national vision of the future of health care in this country.
“The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action,” a program sponsored by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s partnership with AARP, has action coalitions in every state, including Rhode Island.
University of Rhode Island associate dean Lynne Dunphy, who co-leads Rhode Island’s action coalition with three others, says her group is charged with implementing improvements that meet the eight recommendations outlined in an Institute of Medicine of the National Academies’ 2010 report, “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.” Dunphy is coordinator for the R.I. Center for Nursing Excellence and associate dean for external affairs at URI.
The institute recommendations cover such anticipated needs as producing more nurses with baccalaureate degrees and doctorates by the year 2020 and expanding opportunities for nurses to lead collaborative efforts to work in teams to serve patients more efficiently while minimizing cost.
The summit is a part of that effort.
Hoping to enlist more partners and possibly attract funds from invited guests, summit organizers said the changing face of health care with the advent of Obamacare necessitates new ways of strategizing about the delivery of services by not only nurses, but also pharmacists, social workers and doctors.
“We know we’re going to have much more team-based care in the future,” added Dunphy.
“Now, they’re siloed: doctors and nurses don’t talk to each other,” she said. “So, we know it’s going to take not just doctor-nurse partnerships but also pharmacists, social workers and physical therapists, if not working in the same setting, then communicating so there’s an integrated plan of care for the patient, a less-fragmented system.” Other presentations scheduled for the two-day summit include a Sept. 11 tour of the Rhode Island Nurses Institute Middle College in Providence, a new 5-year charter high school focused on nursing, and a panel discussion on Sept. 12 entitled, “How Nurses Can Cure a Sick Rhode Island Economy.”
One in four of the 13,800 employees at Lifespan, Rhode Island’s largest health care employer, and a coalition supporter, is a nurse, said Brandon Melton, the company’s senior vice president for human resources.
An estimated 12,457 nurses and nurse practitioners worked in the state in 2012, according to the Cranston-based Center for Health Professions at the Hospital Association of Rhode Island.
With 76 million baby boomers nationally leaving the workforce in coming years and coming back as patients, Melton said, “We want to ask the question: are we investing enough now? Nursing schools have almost doubled the number of new nursing graduates over the last 10 years. … Is it going to be enough?”
Summits are targeted for every state in the country and about 20 have been held so far.
In Rhode Island, three key initiatives could address future needs.
An advanced nursing school is envisioned as part of a development at the Dynamo House by the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College and Brown University.
The statewide nursing-residency program, which begins the week of Oct. 7 with as many as 35 participants, will employ unemployed or underemployed nurses at different facilities for six months, said Sandra Phillips, project director and director of education at Kent Hospital in Warwick.
And Rhode Island and Massachusetts are in the fourth year of developing a curriculum for medical, nursing, social work and pharmacy students that teaches shared learning experiences so they can work together effectively in teams when they graduate. •

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