Laurie Lewis

Uniting states, sharing strategies: Hawaii's innovative ways to educate its nursing workforce.

Editors note: This is the sixth in a series of articles describing a public and private collaborative effort coordinated by the Center to Champion Nursing in America at AARP to redesign nursing education to prepare the future nursing workforce.

Uniting States, sharing strategies: Oregon takes the lead in addressing the nursing shortage.

A collaborative effort to recruit and educate nurses.

Long-distance caregiving.

Additional challenges arise when caregivers are not nearby.

Uniting States, sharing strategies: Mississippi addresses the nursing shortage.

Editors note: This is the seventh and final installment in a series of articles describing a public and private collaborative effort coordinated by the Center to Champion Nursing in America at AARP to redesign nursing education to prepare the future nursing workforce.

Uniting states, sharing strategies: Massachusetts Initiative unites nurse educators, employers, and funders.

Editors note: This is the fourth in a series of articles describing a public and private collaborative effort coordinated by the Center to Champion Nursing in America at AARP to redesign nursing education to prepare the future nursing workforce.

Uniting States, sharing strategies: Adding more--and better educated--nurses in California.

Editors note: This is the fifth in a series of articles describing a public and private collaborative effort coordinated by the Center to Champion Nursing in America at AARP to redesign nursing education to prepare the future nursing workforce.

Family caregiving. Discussion and recommendations.

Participants in an invitational symposium identified needed competencies, strategies to enhance support of family caregivers, and research priorities.

Discussion and recommendations: improving diabetes self-management.

An invitational symposium identified gaps in the research, barriers to patient self-care, and nursings role in education.

Discussion & Recommendations: Safe Medication Administration: An invitational symposium recommends ways of addressing obstacles.

AJN ▼ March 2005 ▼ Supplement http://www.nursingcenter.com O n July 16 and 17, 2004, more than 40 nurses and representatives from medicine, pharmacy, advocacy, industry, and consumer groups gathered in Philadelphia for an invitational symposium, “The State of the Science on Safe Medication Administration.” The symposium was supported by grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ 1 R13 HS14836-01) and manufacturers of products that promote safe medication administration (see the back cover for a list of sponsors). After listening to several presenters whose articles are published in this supplement to AJN and the Journal of Infusion Nursing, the participants formed six small groups and spent several hours discussing barriers to safe medication administration and ways to overcome them. Specifically, they focused on the following questions: • What are the gaps in the research on safe medication administration? • What are the barriers to preventing medication errors and to ensuring safe medication administration? Consider those in nursing practice, management and administration, education, and policy. • What are the three most significant barriers? • What can be done to overcome, reduce, or eliminate them? Each group attempted to come up with creative approaches to each barrier, listing three ways the problem has been customarily approached and then five possible new approaches. From this list of eight, the group selected what participants considered the three best strategies to address each problem. At the symposium’s end, a plenary session convened in which participants reported on the small groups’ work. Each group presented its list of the three most significant barriers and the best—often new—ways of addressing them. After discussing issues raised at the symposium, participants left with a charge to work with nurses on improving the safety of medication administration. After the symposium, a list of research priorities was generated. The list was then sent by e-mail to symposium participants for prioritization. Table 1 on page 5 of the executive summary lists these priorities for future research. (All tables mentioned in this report appear in the executive summary, starting on page 4.)