ABSTRACT
Chapter 20, written by the four book editors (Weaver, Delaney, Weber, and Carr), is a bookend to Angela McBride’s opening chapter. Starting with the international defi nition of nursing, Chapter 20 traces the imperatives being pushed by health reforms: new communications (Internet) and information technologies and the growing segment of chronically ill patients, including the aged, in our nations’ populations. These imperatives are linked to an examination of opportunities and challenges in current day nursing practice and science and call out the contributions and the role of nursing informatics within our present state. The authors emphasize the critical contributions from nursing informaticians’ work over the past three decades for achieving international standards for the nursing minimum dataset (iNMDS) and a reference terminology (ICNP®).
