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The report of the Task Force on the North Carolina Nursing Workforce--May 2004.

North Carolina is indeed fortunate to have avoided many of the extreme shortages of nurses reported in other states. Yet, even as this was noted, there were important developments on the horizon which had the potential to cause such shortages even here. The fact that there are so many pathways into this field and throughout an individual nurse's career made it necessary to organize our deliberations in a way that enabled the Task Force to deal with the special (often unique) situations faced by one form of nursing education, or one avenue of nursing practice. The Task Force then had to synthesize these findings and recommendations in a format that offered a potential framework for future policy decisions affecting the profession of nursing as a whole. It is a tribute to both the process and the participants that the way these discussions unfolded may have identified ways in which seemingly disjointed elements of North Carolina nursing might begin to see opportunities for collaboration, coordination, and ultimately greater levels of accomplishment in relation to the broad goals of this effort as a whole. In this report, as one would expect, there are identifiable needs: for additional financial support for nursing education (through support to our public and private institutions and their faculties offering different types of nursing credentials, as well as for the scholarship support of those who choose to enter this field), for programs and initiatives to enable recent nursing school graduates to enter nursing better prepared to render the professional services for which they were employed, and for concrete improvements in the nursing work environments. The fact that nursing, especially nursing at the bedside in hospitals and in long-term care, requires increasingly sophisticated technical skills and continues to demand intellectual, physical and emotional energy beyond what would be required in many other professions and occupations, the recruitment and retention of well-prepared and motivated nurses remains a challenge now and in the future. But, as these discussions and the interactions with Task Force members have demonstrated over and over again, nursing is both a dynamic and exciting field of professional practice. And North Carolina is considered by most to be one of the very best states within which to be a nurse. It is hoped that all the 47 recommendations offered in this report, only 16 of which are specified here, will serve as a template for a deliberate policy agenda through which the nursing workforce for North Carolina can continue to be the vibrant example of the highest standards of practice for which its reputation has been well-earned.