The founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale, established the nurse’s role at the bedside, caring for the sick and wounded. Today’s nurse is fully "connected" and has a wide range of responsibilities including 24/7 assessments, monitoring, surveillance, and critical care1.
In the US, nurses now comprise the largest single component of hospital staff and deliver most of the nation's long-term care, comprising of one of the largest segments of the US workforce as a whole.2 They are the front line in healthcare delivery.
“They're the ones closest to the patient, delivering care 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” says Mary Jo LaPosta, MS, PhD, RN, Senior Vice President, Patient Care and Organizational Excellence, Chief Nursing Officer, Saratoga Hospital. “Because of their assessment skills and because of the data that they're exposed to, they're usually the first individual to understand the status of that patient.”