The annual Maryland Action Council Virtual Leadership Summit explores new care models, staffing initiatives, and support services aimed at cultivating retention of the nursing workforce.
From leaders of national nursing organizations to those in state government to presidents of Maryland’s largest hospital systems to nurses themselves, everyone has their eye on the workforce — and what can be done to bolster it, in Maryland and nationwide. The 2023 Maryland Action Coalition (MDAC) Virtual Leadership Summit, hosted by the University of Maryland School of Nursing on May 22, looked to the future of the nursing profession and health care in Maryland through a lens of “Collaborating to Meet Challenges and Opportunities: The State of Maryland’s Health.”
Offered through a full day of live programming, including a poster session and roundtable discussions, to nearly 190 attendees, the summit explored new and innovative collaborations and partnerships to meet nursing’s future health care challenges and to recognize opportunities for making diversity, inclusion, and equity a reality in the workplace.
“If you said to me what are the two to three biggest challenges, my response would be workforce, workforce, workforce,” said M. Joy Drass, MD, executive vice president and chief operating officer of MedStar Health. This came during a morning Fireside Chat on the “Health of Marylanders: Sustainable Change” with Mohan Suntha, MD, MBA, president and CEO of the University of Maryland Medical System, and Kevin Sowers, MSN, RN, FAAN, president of the Johns Hopkins Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine.
All three leaders predicted a change in the model of care in the not-too-distant future, related to staffing, electronic health record use, scheduling, mental health practices, and more. “We’re going to have to rethink our care delivery models. They will be team based, but what will they look like?” Sowers said. “Is it an NP with newly designed roles that’s overseeing a segment of the unit? Is it a nurse using telehealth to direct a team? Is it EMTs in our emergency rooms having a different scope of practice? We’re going to need to partner with schools about what our supply and demand looks like for the future.”