An overview and policy implications of national nurse identifier systems: A call for unity and integration.

There is a clear and growing need to be able record and track the contributions of individual registered nurses (RNs) to patient care and patient care outcomes in the US and also understand the state of the nursing workforce. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity (2021), identified the need to track nurses' collective and individual contributions to patient care outcomes. This capability depends upon the adoption of a unique nurse identifier and its implementation within electronic health records. Additionally, there is a need to understand the nature and characteristics of the overall nursing workforce including supply and demand, turnover, attrition, credentialing, and geographic areas of practice. This need for data to support workforce studies and planning is dependent upon comprehensive databases describing the nursing workforce, with unique nurse identification to support linkage across data sources. There are two existing national nurse identifiers- the National Provider Identifier and the National Council of State Boards of Nursing Identifier. This article provides an overview of these two national nurse identifiers; reviews three databases that are not nurse specific to understand lessons learned in the development of those databases; and discusses the ethical, legal, social, diversity, equity, and inclusion implications of a unique nurse identifier.

Driving toward a culture shift: Case studies of social mission in nursing education.

BACKGROUND: Nursing schools need to provide students with the appropriate tools to develop competencies and resources to actualize moral courage to advance health equity and center social mission. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to describe six nursing programs that exemplify a variety of ways that social mission goals are pursued in different contexts. METHOD: Using a case study approach, we selected nursing schools that excelled in at least one of the following social mission domains: education program, community engagement, governance, diversity & inclusion, institutional culture & climate and research. We conducted video interviews with the administration, faculty and students. FINDINGS: Main themes were: (1) central university/college commitment; (2) allocation of school resources; (3) faculty buy-in; (4) community partnerships; and, (5) an institutional culture of inclusion. DISCUSSION: While each school approaches social mission differently, there are commonalities across cases including a number of necessary factors for schools to advance their social mission goals.