Includes bibliographical references and index.

Entry into practice: an elusive dream or a critical professional need? -- Differentiated nursing practice: maximizing resources or dividing an already divided profession? -- Defining evidence-based best practices -- Socialization and mentoring -- The current nursing shortage: causes, consequences, and solutions -- Importing foreign nurses -- Distance learning: one strategy for furthering nursing education and easing the nursing shortage -- Unlicensed assistive personnel and the registered nurse -- Diversity in the nursing workforce -- Mandatory staffing ratios: are they working? -- Mandatory overtime in nursing: how much? how often? -- Violence in nursing: the expectations and the reality -- Technology in the healthcare workplace: benefits, limitations, and challenges -- Medical errors: an ongoing threat to quality health care -- Whistle-blowing in nursing -- The chemically impaired nurse: discipline or treatment? --

Collective bargaining and the professional nurse -- Assuring provider competency through licensure, continuing education, and certification -- The nursing profession's historic struggle to increase its power base -- Professional identity and image -- Advanced practice nursing: the challenges of role definition, recognition, and reimbursement -- Nursing and public policy: getting involved -- Nursing's professional associations.