Quality care in an era of retrenchment.

Abstract

Unlabelled: SOURCE AND PURPOSE: Constraints in the healthcare delivery system are resulting in unprecedented challenges to quality nursing care. In response to concerns expressed by readers in a JSPN survey, we solicited input from prominent SPN members.

Conclusions: Quality care can be sustained through nurses' creativity, flexibility, leadership, and collaboration. The context for quality care is an organizational environment with attention to critical analysis, careful resource utilization, and improved outcomes.

Practice implications: Nurses can not only maintain premium standards of quality care but, by assuming leadership, help shape the future of health care.