The Evolving Role of Nurses in Modern Healthcare: From Bedside to Leadership

Abstract

Nursing, a profession essential to healthcare, welfare and crisis management, is also one of the oldest professions with roots in ancient times. Nursing’s crucial position in helping people of all ages, genders, cultures and ethnicities in coping with health, illness and crisis situations, is an essential component of all healthcare systems. Nurses were recognized as leaders stand-alone “within and outside formal systems of health service delivery” (Athlin et al., 2014). The disaster of 911 and global pandemics reaffirmed this, as governance is only part of the process in public health care and crisis management. With the right resources and nursing educational pre-conditions, implementation and execution of these philosophies belong to nurses themselves. However, political transformation and risk society have led to homogeneous resource allocation and indiscriminate cutbacks, computerization and digitalization of resources, recruiting and reallocation slogans that overlook environment and locality, shifting of nursing personnel, and a forgetfulness of nursing’s importance as frontline professionals in the struggle for societal equality and health care.