Nursing and its research need to identify diverse health behaviors and learn ways to enhance health promotion and disease prevention for all. A collaborative effort between individuals, families, communities, health care agencies, and policy makers must exist to ensure the best outcomes. In spite of the vibrant economy, the number of the medically uninsured and underserved keeps growing, from 34.6 million in 1991 to 43.4 million today. The greatest number of this population is the working poor who cannot afford health insurance or whose employers do not offer health insurance. Nursing as a health care profession, in keeping with its social contract, must focus and work to alleviate this problem in concert with other health care disciplines.
Nursing also has to address the changing demographics of the pool of future nurses.
The unprecedented educational and professional opportunities for women during the past 25 years have affected nursing significantly. Furthermore, nursing education, in particular, has to come to grips with the implications of the graying of its professorate on the teaching and development of the science of nursing. The looming shortage of nursing faculty compels nursing education to revolutionize its traditional approach of requiring work experience between the bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. To replenish its graying professoriate, nursing education needs to implement a system change to allow young and bright baccalaureate nursing graduates to immediately pursue doctoral nursing degrees. This more direct path will substantially decrease time to prepare nurses for academic and research roles, and in effect, provide them more time to develop and sustain their academic and research careers after the doctoral program.