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Three years ago, thee Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching National Nursing Education Study launched Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation (hereafter referred to as Educating Nurses or the Carnegie Study) (2009 ) as part of Carnegie's Preparation for the Professions Program. Since then, it has been met with enthusiastic responses, many of which are examples of curricular and pedagogical changes in schools of nursing in the United States and Canada. The 3-year point is a good time to stop and reflect on the progress in upgrading and transforming nursing education. I hope this editorial will further the dialogue and encourage more systematic, formal evaluations of the influence of the national Carnegie Foundation studies of education in the professions, in general, and in nursing, in particular, including these questions: How are we doing in closing the practice--education gap, and how are nurses being better prepared to meet today's complex health care needs and improve the health of society? How are we doing in preparing students in (a) the cognitive apprenticeship; (b) the practice apprenticeship and clinical reasoning; and (c) ethical comportment and formation?
My co-authors on Educating Nurses: A Call for Radical Transformation (2009 ) and colleagues, Molly Sutphen, Vickie Leonard, and Lisa Day, who continue to present in national and international conferences and consult with schools of nursing, have reported back exciting news on innovative responses to the findings and recommendations of Educating Nurses . In addition, four major collaborative partners--the American Association of Colleges of Nurses, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, the National League for Nursing, and Sigma Theta Tau--have been actively engaged in efforts to disseminate and implement the Carnegie Study recommendations (Educating Nurses ). Educating Nurses has now been translated into Norwegian and Japanese and is currently being translated into Korean; these translations are creating lively cross-cultural dialogues, even during the translation phases. The following are impressions of the influence of the study and actual examples of innovations.
Several states, including Arizona, Minnesota, Michigan, and Washington, have implemented initiatives to transform nursing education, influenced by the Carnegie Study. An increasing number of baccalaureate programs, including the University of Pennsylvania's program, have introduced nursing seminars in the first 2 years of college to help students...