With our health and nursing workforce in crisis, the entire healthcare system is in critical condition. When experienced nurses leave the workforce substantial knowledge and skills gaps are created – and with the education pipeline choked by a lack of educators and funding, there are fewer and fewer new nurses to step in. When nurses leave, we aren’t just losing a set of scrubs in the unit – we’re losing highly specialized skills, institutional knowledge, clinical acumen, and advanced expertise gleaned over a career of caring for people. 

Part of rebuilding the nursing workforce must be an emphasis on specialty training, focused specifically on reversing the ‘brain drain’ created by attrition in the workforce. And to get there, nurses must be considered as the clinical experts they are, and their deep understanding of care must be acknowledged. In this episode, we hear the musings of nurses Leslie Oleck, president of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA), Linda Groah, the CEO/Executive Director of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), and April Kapu, president of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) about the unique value their specialties bring to the healthcare system as a whole. From reversing provider shortages by working at the top of licensure, to holding the holistic view of a patient during surgery, and integrating the mind and mental wellbeing into all areas and sites of healthcare, they illustrate the importance of nursing expertise across disciplines. 

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