Three Commitments for the Next Decade: A Reflection on the Future of Nursing and My Own Practice
Student Name
RN to BSN Program, Aspen University
N490: Issues and Trends in Professional Nursing
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Three Commitments for the Next Decade: A Reflection on the Future of Nursing and My Own Practice
When I started this course I thought of issues and trends as things that happen to nursing: shortages, new technology, policy changes decided somewhere far from my unit. Eight modules later I read them differently. Most of the trends we studied are shaped by what nurses do or fail to do in ordinary shifts, from whether a burnout complaint arrives with data to whether a discharge is taught through a qualified interpreter. This reflection looks at the future the profession's major reports describe, connects it to what the course changed in my thinking, and ends with three commitments I intend to keep as I finish my baccalaureate degree.
The Future the Profession Has Described
The most influential account of where nursing is headed this decade came from a consensus committee that studied the profession's role through 2030. Its central message is that nurses should be prepared and supported to address the social determinants of health and to advance health equity, working in schools, homes, and communities as well as hospitals, and that nurses' own well-being is a condition for that work rather than an afterthought (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2021). The report calls for nursing education that builds competence in population health and equity, for payment models that support nurses in community roles, and for systems that protect nurses from burnout.
Nursing education is changing in the same direction. The revised Essentials moved baccalaureate and graduate education toward a competency-based model organized around domains that include population health, quality and safety, informatics, and personal and professional leadership, and the document treats diversity, equity, and inclusion as concepts that run through all of them (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021). For an RN-to-BSN student, the message is that the degree is meant to change what a nurse can do, not only what a nurse knows.
The Workforce That Has to Build It
That future has to be built by a workforce that is tired. A national study of registered nurses found that about 100,000 left the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic and that many more reported an intention to leave within a few years, with stress, burnout, and heavy workloads among the most common reasons (Martin et al., 2023). Reading that study after our module on burnout, I noticed that the reports asking nurses to do more in communities and the data describing nurses who are leaving are two sides of one problem. A profession cannot expand its reach while it is losing experienced people faster than it can replace them.
What the Course Changed in My Thinking
Three modules changed how I practice, not only how I think. The burnout module showed me that the conditions I had accepted as part of night shift, eating at the monitor and being mandated twice a month, are documented causes of burnout linked to patient outcomes, and that staff concerns carry more weight when they arrive with numbers. The telehealth module showed me that technology succeeds or fails on the human response behind it, which made me look differently at the alert fatigue on my own unit. The cultural competence module was the most uncomfortable, because I recognized myself in the case of the adult son interpreting discharge teaching. I had done exactly that on busy evenings and called it respecting the family.
The history module tied these together. Nursing became a profession because nurses like Lillian Wald looked past the individual patient to the conditions that made people sick, and the reports that moved nursing into universities were arguing for that wider view. The future the National Academies describe is, in a sense, the same argument made again for a new century (NASEM, 2021). I had thought of the baccalaureate as a credential. I now see it as training in that wider view.
Three Commitments
My first commitment is to bring data to staffing concerns. Before the next staff meeting where breaks and overtime come up, I will track, for one month, how many nights on my unit ran above the target ratio and how many nurses received an uninterrupted break, and I will present that record with a specific request. My second commitment is to use a qualified interpreter for every admission assessment and every discharge teaching session with a patient who has limited English proficiency, and to document the interpreter's identification number every time, with no exceptions for busy evenings. My third commitment is to take the population view into my capstone work by choosing a project that looks at a pattern on my unit, such as readmissions after heart failure discharge, rather than a single patient story.
I also expect each commitment to meet resistance, and I would rather name that now than discover it later. Tracking ratios and breaks takes time I do not have on a heavy night, so I will record the two numbers at the end of each shift on a single card rather than attempt a detailed log. The interpreter commitment will be tested the first evening a family member offers to help and the video device is in use on another unit; my plan for that evening is to use the telephone line, which is slower but always available. The capstone commitment depends on access to unit data, so I will ask my manager this month which readmission reports already exist rather than design a project around numbers I cannot get.
Each commitment is small enough to begin this month and specific enough that I will know whether I kept it. That was the lesson I took from the course's quality improvement thinking: a goal without a measure is a wish.
Conclusion
The future of nursing described in national reports is broader, more community-based, and more focused on equity than the practice many of us trained for, and it depends on a workforce that is currently under strain. This course showed me that the trends shaping that future are not distant forces but the accumulated result of ordinary decisions made on ordinary shifts. I finish it with a clearer sense of why the baccalaureate matters and with three concrete commitments that put the course's lessons into practice where I work.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2021). The essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education. https://www.aacnnursing.org/Portals/0/PDFs/Publications/Essentials-2021.pdf
Martin, B., Kaminski-Ozturk, N., O'Hara, C., & Smiley, R. (2023). Examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on burnout and stress among U.S. nurses. Journal of Nursing Regulation, 14(1), 4-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2155-8256(23)00063-7
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2021). The future of nursing 2020-2030: Charting a path to achieve health equity. The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25982
How this N 490 Module 8 example is structured
Module 8 of Issues and Trends in Professional Nursing closes the course with the future of nursing and a reflection, and the written work in many sections asks students to reflect on course learning, the direction of the profession and their own professional practice. Aspen does not publish module deliverables, so your classroom's prompt sets the exact questions. This example is a first-person reflection that stays gradable: it summarizes two authoritative descriptions of the future, adds workforce data for tension, names what specific modules changed, and ends with commitments that are timed and measurable. The integration of earlier modules is where final reflection rubrics usually place their heaviest row.
N490 Module 8 questions, answered
What does N490 Module 8 usually ask for?
The final module covers the future of nursing and reflection, and the assignment is commonly a reflective paper on what the student learned, how it applies to practice and where the profession is heading. Aspen does not publish module deliverables, so your classroom's instructions and rubric decide the exact prompt.
Can I write a reflection paper in first person?
Yes. APA allows first person, and a reflection paper needs it. What keeps a reflection strong is evidence and specifics: cite the reports you discuss, name the modules that changed your thinking and describe concrete changes in practice, as the sample does.
How many sources does a reflection paper need?
Fewer than an argumentative paper, but still enough to anchor claims about the profession. The sample uses three: the National Academies report, the AACN Essentials and a national workforce study. Check your rubric, since some sections require a minimum number of scholarly sources even for reflections.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Aspen University document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.