Happy New Year!! The year 2013 will bring great changes, and challenges to healthcare. One of the biggest focuses in healthcare continues to be the nursing environment. There continues to be new evidence to support the need for healthcare workers to work in a collaborative manner to ensure quality patient care and a healthy work environment. I attended a webinar this week presented by Dr. Linda Aiken who reported the following findings about nurse staffing, outcomes, and the work environment: According to the Practice Environment Scale (PES) nurses report that management is not responsive in resolving problems in patient care Each 1 patient in a nurse's workload is associated with 7% increased mortality (Aiken, 2011 "Medical Care") 38% of nurses have BSN that work at hospitals (range 0-80%) Patients in hospital with 50% BSN RNs have 15% lower odds on dying Experience is not a substitute for education 41% staff nurses rated environment poor/fair (PES; Aiken, 2