One member of the audience highlighted accelerated Ph.D. programs as a possible solution to help alleviate faculty shortages.

One participant emphasized the need for additional nursing research and funding to support this research. The participant said faculty development and educational processes need to be enhanced at the hundreds of universities that are not academic health centers (where much of the research funding is currently focused) because the majority of nurses and other health care providers are educated at these non-academic health center institutions.

One participant said the nursing community should be broadly defined to include licensed practical nurses, licensed vocational nurses, and other individuals who deliver care in homes and communities.

As prompted by the committee’s call for testimony that described visions for the future of nursing prior to the forum, a number of people shared their specific visions, which included

• Students learning multicultural perspectives and receiving education in the area of geriatrics, as the U.S. population continues to grow older and diversify.

• Using nurse-managed clinics to provide sites for the integration of discovery, learning, and engagement and to allow for the design of new, cost-effective, safe, high-quality, and efficient models of care.

• Establishing national, evidence-based core competencies in pediatric nursing to ensure that children have a competent pediatric nurse no matter where they are treated.

• Meeting the needs of nursing graduates from other countries who need to be integrated into U.S. health care settings.