The Chief Nursing Officer Council: A Model to Achieve Integrated Professional Practice in Health Care Systems

The directive to develop more nursing leaders was clear in the 2010 report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health.1 The IOM had 4 messages for nurses: one, practice to the full extent of your education and training; two, achieve higher levels of education and training through a system that promotes unified academic progression; three, partner with physicians and other health care professionals to achieve care reform; and four, commence improved data collection and information structure to realize effective workforce planning and policy making. Research continues to show the influence of nursing leadership on patient satisfaction, patient mortality, medication errors, restraint use, and hospital-associated infections (HAIs).