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AACN Board urges support for the Nightingale Declaration |
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The American Association of Colleges of Nursing’s (AACN) Board of Directors is urging all members, colleagues, faculty, students, and alumni networks to sign The Nightingale Declaration. AACN is also supporting the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health's (NIGH) proposed resolutions to the United Nations to establish an International Year of the Nurse (2010) and a UN Decade for a Healthy World (2011-2020).
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AACN President Jeanette Lancaster, PhD, RN, FAAN
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"This lifesaving work and the important part nurses play must be
expanded into the global arena where the need to encourage nurse
development and advancement is critical. Through NIGH, nurses can
assert their influence as the largest component of the health care
system and highlight their vital role in caring for patients the world
over.”
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AACN works to improve the quality of America's health care by preparing a well-educated nursing workforce. It is the national voice for university and four-year college education programs in nursing in the country.
Representing more than 620 member schools of nursing at public and private institutions nationwide, AACN's educational, research, governmental advocacy, data collection, publications, and other programs work to establish quality standards for bachelor's and graduate degree nursing education, assist deans and directors to implement those standards, influence the nursing profession to improve health care, and promote public support of baccalaureate and graduate nursing education, research, and practice.
"As nurse leaders and educators, we are in a unique position to impact the perceptions of nursing and underscore the important contribution nurses make in health care delivery,” says AACN President Jeanette Lancaster, PhD, RN, FAAN.
According to the AACN President: “Nursing is at the forefront of the quality and patient safety movement in the U.S.
"The Institute of Medicine, in fact, describes nurses as “indispensable” to patient safety, risk reduction, and positive clinical outcomes.
"This lifesaving work and the important part nurses play must be expanded into the global arena where the need to encourage nurse development and advancement is critical. Through NIGH, nurses can assert their influence as the largest component of the health care system and highlight their vital role in caring for patients the world over.”
Dr. Jeanette Lancaster became President of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) in March 2006. During the same year, she was appointed by Virginia Secretaries of Health & Human Services and of Education to serve on a statewide Healthcare Workforce Task Force. Dr. Lancaster is a Fellow in the prestigious American Academy of Nursing.
She holds the first endowed nursing professorship in the United States (established in 1928) and was honoured in 1999 with the first endowed professorship named for a female Dean at the University of Virginia: the Jeanette Lancaster Alumni Professorship in Nursing. She has been honoured as a distinguished alumna at the University of Tennessee College of Nursing and the Francis Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University and was named honorary alumna at the UVA School of Nursing. In 2005, the Beta Kappa Chapter of Sigma ThetaTau International Honor Society of Nursing awarded her the Distinguished Nurse Award.
In collaboration with various colleagues, she has published over 50 articles in a variety of professional journals and given more than 200 speeches and workshops throughout the United States and in several foreign countries. She edits the interdisciplinary journal Family and Community Health and has edited or co-edited eight textbooks.
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