Today Nursing in the United States has undergone tremendous changes in recent years. Those providing care and teaching in schools of nursing are better prepared educationally than ever before, the science that underlies our practice is increasingly being built through scholarly efforts of nurses, and collaborative partnerships between nurses and other health care workers continue to evolve. In addition, the opportunities for nurses to influence the health of people through their roles as nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, home care clinicians, managers and administrators, health educators, acute and long term care clinicians, and faculty are growing dramatically. In order to prepare nurses for beginning and advanced levels of practice, educational programs also have undergone tremendous changes in recent years.
Many curricula are creative and interactive, rather than rigid and proscriptive.
And the integration of technology and the use of distance learning strategies are more evident in nursing education programs. In educational programs there is an increased emphasis on documenting program outcomes and demonstrating that graduates do, indeed, have the patient care, thinking, and communication abilities needed to function in our complex, constantly-changing, ambiguous, unpredictable, chaotic health care arena. What to Expect In light of these changes, students coming to the United States to study nursing should expect to find graduate and undergraduate programs that are challenging, innovative, and designed to meet their individual needs as learners. You should expect to find library and computer resources that will allow you to access unlimited resources, be creative in teaching patients about managing their own health, communicate with experts in the field, and continually develop your own knowledge base and scholarly abilities. Such experiences with diverse populations contribute to the students' understanding of human beings, as well as to their ability to provide culturally-sensitive care.