A review of the international literature indexed in the CINAHL database was performed for the period
January - August 2010. The key phrases used were: ‘nursing skills and knowledge’, ‘nursing future and politics’,
‘nursing future and responsibility’, ‘nursing future and leadership’. We used only abstracts in English. A total of 343
abstracts were retrieved and assessed. All abstracts that did not include issues related to the importance of nursing
knowledge and the importance of connecting nursing knowledge with patient needs were excluded. Twenty-two
articles in total were included. A qualitative synthesis of the conclusions from each of the articles included was
conducted, from which content codes were generated. The codes were then placed into content categories.