Dr. Julie Sochalski, an Associate Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania has held senior policy analyst positions at the United Hospital Fund of New York, the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission in Washington, D.C., and has served on the Board of Directors of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan and was a 1992-1993 Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow. She is Associate Director at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the School of Nursing and a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, a Research Associate in the Population Studies Center, and a standing faculty member of the Hartford Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence.

Dr. Julie Sochalski has spent a large part of her nursing career examining how changes in health care policy affect health outcomes. Her research portfolio includes federally funded and foundation supported studies in the outcomes of hospital care in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Germany; the impact of geriatric rehabilitation for frail elders on functional status and health service use; and Medicare payment policy for nursing education programs; and trends in the national and international nursing workforce.

OUTCOMES OF HOSPITAL CARE
A study by Dr. Sochalski and her colleagues at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, shows that new nurses are leaving the field faster than ever before because of job dissatisfaction. Although, Congress passed the Nurse Reinvestment Act, offering financial incentives to attract more women and men to the nursing profession, Sochalski argues that more energy must be put into retaining current RNs and making certain that recent graduates seek work in nursing.

The current nursing shortage, high hospital nurse job dissatisfaction, and reports of uneven quality of hospital care are not uniquely American phenomena. Nurses in countries with distinctly different health care systems report similar shortcomings in their work environments and the quality of hospital care. While the competence of and relation between nurses and physicians appear satisfactory, core problems in work design and workforce management threaten the provision of care. Resolving these issues, which are amenable to managerial intervention, is essential to preserving patient safety and care of consistently high quality. (Aiken LH, Clarke SP, Sloane DM, Sochalski JA, Busse R, Clarke H, Giovannetti P, Hunt J, Rafferty AM, Shamian J., Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, 2002)