• Frances Kam Yuet Wong, Huaping Liu, Hui Wang, Debra Anderson, Charrlotte Seib, and Alex Molasiotis.
• Pi Iota, Professor, School of Nursing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China SAR.
• J Nurs Scholarsh. 2015 Nov 1; 47 (6): 574-83.

PurposeTo analyze World Health Organization (WHO) documents to identify global nursing issues and development.DesignQualitative content analysis.MethodsDocuments published by the six WHO regions between 2007 and 2012 and with key words related to nurse/midwife or nursing/midwifery were included. Themes, categories, and subcategories were derived. The final coding reached 80% agreement among three independent coders, and the final coding for the discrepant coding was reached by consensus.FindingsThirty-two documents from the regions of Europe (n = 19), the Americas (n = 6), the Western Pacific (n = 4), Africa (n = 1), the Eastern Mediterranean (n = 1), and Southeast Asia (n = 1) were examined. A total of 385 units of analysis dispersed in 31 subcategories under four themes were derived. The four themes derived (number of unit of analysis, %) were Management & Leadership (206, 53.5), Practice (75, 19.5), Education (70, 18.2), and Research (34, 8.8).ConclusionsThe key nursing issues of concern at the global level are workforce, the impacts of nursing in health care, professional status, and education of nurses. International alliances can help advance nursing, but the visibility of nursing in the WHO needs to be strengthened.Clinical RelevanceOrganizational leadership is important in order to optimize the use of nursing competence in practice and inform policy makers regarding the value of nursing to promote people's health.© 2015 Sigma Theta Tau International.

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