Profession building in the new health care system

To further the goals of greater legitimacy and power, it is necessary for nursing to abandon many of the profession building strategies it has pursued in the past. We describe the traditional framework for profession building in nursing and some reasons it is no longer effective. In contrast, a contemporary framework for profession building in nursing is presented. Because nursing, like other complex adaptive systems, is strongly anchored by its past trajectory, it will require considerable energy and resources to make the transition.