Nursing professionalization is both ongoing and global, being significant not only for the nursing workforce but also for patients and healthcare systems. For this reason, it is important to have an in-depth understanding of this process and the factors that could affect it. This literature review utilizes a welfare state approach to examine macrolevel structural determinants of nursing professionalization, addressing a previously identified gap in this literature, and synthesizes research on the relevance of studying nursing professionalization. The use of a welfare state framework facilitates the understanding that the wider social, economic, and political system exercises significant power over the distribution of resources in a society, providing a glimpse into the complex politics of health and health care. The findings shed light on structural factors outside of nursing, such as country-level education, health, labor market, and gender policies that could impact the process of professionalization and thus could be utilized to strengthen nursing through facilitating increased professionalization levels. Addressing gender inequalities and other structural determinants of nursing professionalization could contribute to achieving health equity and could benefit health systems through enhanced availability, skill-level, and sustainability of nursing human resources, improved and efficient access to care, improved patient outcomes, and cost savings.
Nurses represent the highest proportion of healthcare workers globally and have played a vital role during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has shed light on multiple vulnerabilities that have impacted the nursing workforce including critical levels of staffing shortages in Canada. A review sponsored by the Royal Society of Canada investigated the impact of the pandemic on the nursing workforce in Canada to inform planning and implementation of sustainable nursing workforce strategies. The review methods included a trend analysis of peer-reviewed articles, a jurisdictional scan of policies and strategies, analyses of published surveys and interviews of nurses in Canada, and a targeted case study from Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. Findings from the review have identified longstanding and COVID-specific impacts, gaps, and opportunities to strengthen the nursing workforce. These findings were integrated with expert perspectives from national nursing leaders involved in guiding the review to arrive at recommendations and actions that are presented in this policy brief. The findings and recommendations from this policy brief are meant to inform a national and sustained focus on retention and recruitment efforts in Canada.
Sister (Sr.) Marie Simone Roach, of the Sisters of St. Martha of Antigonish, Nova Scotia, died at the Motherhouse on 2 July 2016 at the age of 93, leaving behind a rich legacy of theoretical and practical work in the areas of care, caring and nursing ethics. She was a humble soul whose deep and scholarly thinking thrust her onto the global nursing stage where she will forever be tied to a central concept in nursing, caring, through her Six Cs of Caring model. In Canada, she was the lead architect of the Canadian Nurses Association's first code of ethics, and her influence on revisions to it is still profound more than 35 years later. In this paper, four global scholars in nursing and ethics are invited to reflect on Sr. Simone's contribution to nursing and health-care, and we link her work to nursing and health-care going forward.
The Canadian Nurses Association has a long-standing history of strengthening the nursing profession and the health system, supporting professional practice, and advocating for healthy public policy at the local, national, and global level. Historical writings have typically focused on the significant milestones achieved throughout the past century, and the various social, political, and economic contexts that have shaped the evolution of the association. While historical sources illustrate an organization with a strong track record of policy advocacy leadership and presence, there is little literature that has examined how the association’s policy advocacy agenda has evolved overtime. Using Shamian’s emerging “Bubble” Theory and Spheres of Policy Influence Model as an analytical framework, the authors use historical archives and documents to examine the internal and external drivers that have shaped the association’s policy advocacy agenda over the past century and conclude that the Canadian Nurses Association has established itself as a credible leader in shaping not only nursing but also health-care and public policy at the local, national, and global level.
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