Current nursing practice: challenges and successes

Abstract

The changing healthcare environment is placing greater demands on all healthcare service sectors, including nursing practice. Nurses are professionally engaged in caring for human beings and to pursue nursing as their profession actively (Merriam Webster Dictionary 2011). However, every year, changes in the healthcare environment accelerate, opportunities become harder to predict, competitors emerge at an ever-increasing pace and partnering with internal and external customers becomes essential for success. It is thus inevitable that the pace of changes in nursing practice will continue to increase, and the level of complexity and interdependence in practice will continue to grow (Boss & Sims 2008, Politis 2006). These new practices and the things nurses will focus on will become their reality, and the actions they will perform will create their reality (Hall & Hammond, Reed 2007).