Overview

Guest Editors:

Debra Jackson
University of Western Sydney, NSW, Australia

and

Carol Haigh
Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom

There can be no doubt that a strong, resilient, responsive and effective nursing workforce makes an enormous contribution to positive health outcomes for people. Conversely, a weakened or vulnerable nursing workforce can have negative or deleterious effects on people and their health, and on the ability of health care organisations to provide acceptable services.

Nursing has been beset by workforce challenges for much of the recent past, with concern focused on several key issues, such as recruitment and retention of nurses (McMillan & Conway, 2007), the ageing workforce (Fitzgerald, 2007; Jackson, 2008), and workplace issues such as violence (Luck, Jackson, & Usher, 2006; Speedy, 2006) and bullying (Hutchinson, Vickers, Wilkes & Jackson, 2010).

Furthermore, in many locations, the ability to provide efficacious nursing care is negatively affected by continued cuts to funding for hospital services. Like many other workers, nurses are being asked to do more with less, and there are additional challenges presented to the nursing workforce, including increasing global migration (Likupe, 2006; Raghuram, 2007), new superbugs and diseases (see for example: Chen, Chang, Lin & Chen, 2009; Shih et al., 2009), new technologies (Dowding et al., 2009; Garrett & Klein, 2008; Lee, 2008) and new roles (Chaney et al., 2007; Daly & Bryant, 2007).

If we want to see optimal standards of care in all situations and settings, we need to ensure that nurses are supported to effectively challenge poor practice, and are able to successfully advocate for individual patients, families, institutions and communities, as well as for their colleagues and the wider profession.

This special issue of Advances in Contemporary Nursing seeks to illuminate difficulties and challenges facing the nursing workforce and is devoted to a comprehensive and wide range of concerns associated with the contemporary nursing environment.

It is important that these issues be illuminated, because the first step to dealing with a problem situation effectively is to first recognise it, to make it visible, so that the nature and extent of the issue can be understood. Only then can effective explanation and resolution be sought.

Considering some of the challenges nursing faces, it can be easy to fall into a state of despondency and hopelessness about the future of nursing. However, it is vitally important to sustain optimism (Jackson, 2009), to continue to interrogate the issues that affect the nursing workforce, to illuminate that which remains hidden, to engage in dialogue, and to explore innovative ways of addressing the challenges that confront us.

It is hoped that this Special Issue might be a catalyst for reflection, dialogue, further research and inquiry, and most of all, in providing a forum for nurses to share their experiences, ideas, and scholarship, contributing to a discourse that will play a part in role enhancement, service development, and improved care of our patients, clients, and communities.

This Special Issue of Advances in Contemporary Nursing is devoted to workforce and workplace issues and as such it represents vital reading for nursing educators, researchers and practitioners.

Table of Contents

Advances in Contemporary Nursing: Workforce and Workplaces

Who to turn to? 'Knowing the ropes' in an underbounded health care system
Elizabeth McInnes, Mary Chiarella

 Mental illness in the nursing workplace: a collective autoethnography
Mary P Finlayson, Jacquie D Kidd

Trial and retribution: A qualitative study of whistleblowing and workplace relationships in nursing
Debra Jackson, Kathleen Peters, Sharon Andrew, Michel Edenborough, Elizabeth J Halcomb, Lauretta Luck, Yenna Salamonson, Roslyn Weaver, Lesley Wilkes

A Nurse Practitioner Initiated Model of Service Delivery in Caring for People with Dementia
Sally Borbasi, Elizabeth Emmanuel, Brona Farrelly, Jayne Ashcroft

Multidisciplinary teams caring for clients with chronic conditions: Experiences of community nurses and allied health professionals
Jane Cioffi, Lesley Wilkes, Joanne Cummings, Bronwyn Warne, Kathleen Harrison

Nurse Care Coordinators: Definitions and scope of practice
Catherine L Hungerford, Megan Nutt
Scope of practice conflict in nursing:

 A new war or just the same battle?
Sandy Eagar, Leanne S Cowin, Linda Gregory, Angela Firtko
Workplace conversations: Building and maintaining collaborative capital
Glenda E McDonald, Margaret H Vickers, Shantala Mohan, Lesley Wilkes, Debra Jackson

The Advent of mental health nurses in Australian General Practice
Phil Maude, Michael Olasoji

Increased numbers of Australian Indigenous nurses would make a significant contribution to ‘closing the gap' in Indigenous health: What is getting in the way?
Roianne West, Kim Usher, Kim Foster

Close observation by "specials" to promote the safety of the older person with behavioural disturbances in the acute care setting
Lesley Wilkes, Debra Jackson, Shantala Mohan, Marianne Wallis