When I was asked to do this editorial, my first thought was that I needed to address racial and ethnic diversity. That concerned me because there are many nurse academics more competent than I am that have already addressed this topic. I wondered what I could possibly add, so like any good academic I went to the literature. I searched a number of the electronic databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and so forth) using the term “diversity.” Although racial and ethnic diversity were among the many topics that were listed, there were many others which got me to thinking.

What is it like for an individual with complicated health care needs to navigate our modern, technologically sophisticated and highly complex care environments? What is it like for their families when efforts to access information and assistance necessary to manage care at home are lost in the shuffle? Those questions have prompted health systems, governmental agencies, academia, and scholars to investigate the burden and poor health outcomes that patients and families may experience during the transition within and across care environments.

Many thanks to Drs. Grace, Willis, Roy, and Jones for their cogent article, “Professions at the crossroads: A dialog concerning the preparation of nursing scholars and leaders.” Erosion of concern for the philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual foundations of the discipline of nursing is evidenced by decreasing attention to theory in curricula, publications, and programs in the United States. Moreover, as the authors noted, faculty members seeking tenure or promotion, particularly at research universities, are typically urged to produce data-driven publications.

Nurse bullying is an extremely common phenomenon which has detrimental consequences to nurses, patients, health care institutions, and to the nursing profession itself. It has even been linked to increased patient mortality. This article demonstrates the critical need to resolve the issue of nurse bullying. It also shows that previous attempts of resolution have not been successful, which may be partly due to the fact that the problem is relatively unacknowledged outside the nursing profession. To resolve the problem of nurse bullying, we believe that the solution must include an incentive for institutions to implement the necessary interventions and to ensure that they are effective. We propose that a measurement pertaining to the level of nurse bullying be factored into the calculation of the value-based incentive payment in the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program.

The personal spiritual health of nurses may play an important role in improving their attitudes toward spiritual care and their professional commitment and caring capabilities. The hypothetical model provided a good fit with the data. Nurses' spiritual health had a positive effect on nurses' professional commitment and caring. Nurses' attitudes toward spiritual care could therefore mediate their personal spiritual health, professional commitment, and caring.

A learning health care system (LHCS) supports research and clinical care leading to improved patient outcomes. An LHCS incorporates the ongoing cycle of learning and improvement that starts with the decision to study a problem and continues through assembling and analyzing relevant data, interpreting results, delivering a tailored message, and taking action to change practice; continuation of the cycle allows for optimal learning. The goals of the LHCS concept, introduced in 2007, are to share data, generate knowledge rapidly, and inform clinical decisions; these contribute to the goal of personalized health care (Friedman et al., 2015).

Nearly 750,000 adolescents and emerging adults with special health care needs (AEA-SHCN) enter into adulthood annually. The linkages to ensure the seamless transfer of care from pediatric to adult care and transition to adulthood for AEA-SHCN have yet to be realized. As the findings indicate, HCT is an emerging field of practice that is largely in the exploratory stage of model development.

A pressing need in the field of nursing is the identification of optimal staffing levels to ensure patient safety. Effective staffing requires comprehensive measurement of nursing workload to determine staffing needs. Our findings could help leaders consider and identify workload that is unnecessary, redundant, or more appropriate for assignment to other members of the health care team.

Nurses are well-positioned for innovation in health care delivery, although innovation is not generally learned in formal educational programs. The purpose of this study was to assess critical competencies for innovation success among nurse leaders in academia and practice, the perceived gaps on those competencies, and teaching methods that would be helpful in developing competencies related to innovation.

The purpose of this report is to describe the types of funding support provided by federal government agencies (including the NIH) to schools of nursing. The funding level and its implications for the future of nursing science are considered.

Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Recognizing that smoke-free policies can significantly reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality by preventing exposure to second-hand smoke and increasing quit rates, members of the Tobacco Control Subgroup of the American Academy of Nursing's (AAN) Health Behavior Expert Panel launched a health policy initiative entitled theSmoke-Free Campus Policy for Schools of Nursing Campaign. Designed as a two-phased initiative, the Campaign is a Call to Action to increase smoke-free policies on campuses with Schools of Nursing across the United States by 2020.

Increasingly, initiatives by civil societies, governmental and nongovernmental agencies, and international partners have highlighted inequities in health care access and health outcomes for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people throughout the world. The United States Agency for International Development promotes LGBT human rights globally through its LGBT Global Development Partnership and has a vision that “…the basic and universal human rights of LGBT persons are respected and they are able to live with dignity, free from discrimination, persecution, and violence” (USAID, 2015).