Professional practice model: strategies for translating models into practice.

In the current health care climate, economic and cultural conditions have created an optimal opportunity to envision a new direction for nursing as a profession. Nurses find themselves at the formative stages of charting this new direction. The articulation of a professional practice model provides a framework for setting this new direction and thus the achievement of exemplary clinical outcomes. In this article, the authors describe the evolution of the professional practice model at the Massachusetts General Hospital and how the model continues to be evaluated and modified over time by the nurses within the system.