National League for Nursing Goes Live with New Website to Boost White House Initiative for Veterans' Health Care

Webinars, Podcasts, Unfolding Cases, Annotated Bibliography, and More Now Available Online

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, NY — January 31, 2013 — It has been well documented that hundreds of thousands of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq have been affected by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). Since 2000, it is estimated, more than 44,000 troops have suffered at least a moderate-grade traumatic brain injury.

Given this disturbing national health care challenge, the National League for Nursing was among the leading organizations in nursing and nursing education to heed a call to action last spring by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden. The two asked nurses, as first responders, to more effectively address the unique health care demands of men and women in the US armed services, veterans, and military families. The NLN supported the resulting White House-backed Joining Forces initiative, helping to enlist more than 150 state and national nursing organizations and more than 500 schools of nursing in a pledge to educate nurses how to recognize the symptoms of debilitating, though often invisible, conditions afflicting military personnel and their families and provide care appropriate to different practice settings.

Now, with its new content-rich, multi-platform website dedicated to nursing education for improved care of veterans and military families, the NLN has again taken the lead to advance the Joining Forces promise.

"From the outset, the NLN was determined to pay more than lip service to Joining Forces," said NLN CEO Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN. "As nurse educators, we have a civic duty and moral obligation to adequately prepare the nursing workforce to meet the health care needs of this specialized population, men and women who have risked their lives for the rest of us." Added Judith A. Halstead, PhD, RN, FAAN, ANEF, the president of the NLN: "In order to successfully educate nurses to care for veterans, nurse faculty must have access to comprehensive resources and professional development programming. We have drawn on the expertise of leading nurse educators to provide just that."

At www.nln.org/aboutnln/joiningforces/, nurse educators will find a wealth of teaching tools, ready to be incorporated into classroom and clinical instructional sites. These include: webinars and podcasts; databases and annotated bibliography of evidence-based best practices; content-specific resources on PTSD, TBI, depression, suicide, and related disorders; and veteran and family hotlines. In June 2013 interactive, unfolding case studies and simulation scenarios focused on veteran-centered care will be added to the website. Patterned after the NLNs highly regarded ACES Advancing Care Excellence for Seniors program, these are generously funded by Laerdal Medical Corp.

To learn more about NLNs role in the launch of Joining Forces, click here.

Editors/Reporters: For interview opportunities, please contact Karen R. Klestzick, NLN chief communications officer, at 212-812-0376 or kklestzick@nln.org.

Dedicated to excellence in nursing, the National League for Nursing is the premier organization for nurse faculty and leaders in nursing education. The NLN offers faculty development, networking opportunities, testing services, nursing research grants, and public policy initiatives to its 37,000 individual and more than 1,200 institutional members comprising nursing education programs across the spectrum of higher education and health care organizations.