Going forward into the 21st century. Stewart Conference endpaper

The issues addressed in these brief remarks represent some of the most serious problems that we will need to solve if we hope to deliver the kind of health care that is needed in the new century. What a challenge! In approaching this task we will have to be so much more creative than we have ever been. As our colleague, Joann Disch (2000), suggested in a recent column, we will need to learn that creativity is often a matter of asking the right questions. Her prime example was a good one and one that I would leave you with today. "...the major transformation that occurred in Nomadic societies (was) when the question changed from, 'How do we get to the water?" to, "How do we get the water to come to us?" (p. 311). On all these major issues, it will take a great deal of thoughtful deliberation and hard work for us to "get the water to come to us." I do believe that we can manage this, however, and I also believe that nurses will need to exert more leadership in this effort. But nurses will also need to step up to the plate and take a more active role than we have been willing to take in the past. That may well prove to be the most difficult test for our profession, simply being generous enough with our time and talents, remembering that the trick is not to have all the right answers but rather to ask the right questions. Carpe diem! Seize the day!