The future shape of the nursing workforce: a synthesis of the evidence of factors that impact on quality nursing care

BACKGROUND To effectively respond to the growing demand for healthcare, governments need to consider how to recruit and retain their healthcare staff. This challenge is recognised by the nursing and midwifery professions. This umbrella review, supported by a group of nurse leaders in Australia, aimed to identify those elements known to support a high quality workforce by drawing on the best available Australian and international evidence. The findings provided recommendations that relate to practice, research, education and policy initiatives to help shape the future nursing workforce in Australia and internationally. METHOD An umbrella review of published systematic reviews was undertaken focusing on the Australian and international evidence for factors that are known to impact upon the ability of nurses and midwives to deliver high quality patient care. A total of 79 systematic reviews published between 1995 and 2012 met the inclusion criteria and of these 50 were considered of sufficient quality and were included in the results.Alison L. Kitson, Rick Wiechula, Tiffany Conroy, Åsa Muntlin Athlin, Nancy Whitake