The NLN takes a high road: an interview with NLN CEO Patricia Moccia. (National League for Nursing)(Innovations in Community-Based Education)(Interview)

Vision and Mission

The National League for Nursing is a leader in advancing the health of diverse communities through nursing.

The mission of the NLN is to improve education and health outcomes by linking communities and information. The NLN achieves its mission through collaborating, connecting, creating, serving, and learning.

At the Leagues convention in June of 1995, the NLN membership voted to adopt a new vision, mission, and strategic plan. This vote was the culmination of over a year of analysis and discussion among the NLN members, staff, and Board of Governors. Since then, it has been up to the NLN staff, with the help and advice of members, to garner and deploy resources to support the new vision, mission, and goals. In November of 1995. NLN CEO Patricia Moccia, PhD, RN, FAAN, presented the Board of Governors with a new structure designed to align the organization more closely with its new strategic mission. Since then, the NLN staff has moved to implement the new structure.

Dr. Moccia recently spent several hours with N&HC: Perspectives on Community explaining the new structure, outlining the reasons behind it, and providing some examples of what members and the general public can expect from the reorganized NLN We publish excerpts from that conversation here. N&HC: Perspectives on Community What do you hope to accomplish with this reorganization?

Patricia Moccia: This restructuring is part of our efforts to turn the organization around. The NLN is just like every one of our member schools and agencies and every other nonprofit and professional association in that all indicators call for a more focused direction and a clearer course--and call for it to have happened yesterday. We have been successful in reversing the League's financial trajectory. We now must take the necessary steps to assure our continued viability.

In late 1994. I shared with the NLN Board of Governors my three goals for the NLN in the next three years. One was to reclaim the NLN's unique identity as the education arm of the profession. Two, to re-establish the League as a credible voice and force in the public discussions around community-based health care. Three, to assure the financial base and expert resources to support members in their efforts to advance NLN's mission and goals.

This restructuring was in order long ago and certainly in order in 1993 and 1994. But it took us these last two years to bring the NLN back to a financial position strong enough to support the change.

N&HC: You must have some specific objectives for the restructuring...

Dr. Moccia: First, we hope to organize the way our members and staff work together to support the vision, mission, and goals of the organization. The structure is simply a format and an organizing framework that will let us focus on how we are addressing the vision of the organization.

Second, we're looking for the best way to produce relevant products, services, and information that are helpful to people who are working in their local communities and their local institutions towards the same vision we see.

We have got to find a way to systematically identify what nurses and their colleagues need and then develop those products and services and information that will help them work in their communities to assure access to health care, to educate nurses well, to …