The latest issue of Johns Hopkins Nursing (http://web.jhu.edu/jhnmagazine) —the magazine named the best nursing print media of 2009 by Sigma Theta Tau international honor society for nurses—takes a look at how nursing education has changed over the years and how generational differences are driving those changes.
The fall/winter issue, which celebrates 120 years of Hopkins nursing education and 25 years as a university-based School of Nursing, also takes a humorous view of future nurses and a nostalgic look at the past.
The issue's lead feature article, "Nursing School 2.0," explores how soon-to-be-retiring baby boomer nurses are sharing their knowledge with up-and-coming Gen Xers and Millennials —the nursing students and recent graduates whose upbringing, expectations, and uninhibited expression of thought are markedly different than previous generations. Conversations with Hopkins nurses, senior faculty, students, and recent grads reveal the depths of the "generation lap" and the serious educational reengineering required to bridge it. (http://web.jhu.edu/jhnmagazine/fall2009/features/nursing_school_2.0.html)
The creative inside cover sketches, "Robo-Nurse (RN)" and "OB Nurse of the Future," are the result of the editors' challenge to nurse artists to create their vision of the nursing uniform of the future. Two outstanding entries included in this issue depict tomorrow's nurses garbed in ultra-efficient gear, complete with odor and microbe-resistant spit-up pads. (http://web.jhu.edu/jhnmagazine/fall2009/features/uniforms_of_the_future.html)