Knowledge workers and knowledge-intense organizations, Part 3. Implications for preparing healthcare professionals.

We have outlined a framework for understanding knowledge workers, knowledge-intense organizations, and the promise of sophisticated, interdisciplinary knowledge work teams because we believe that healthcare is the quintessential knowledge-based service industry. These changes will revolutionize healthcare. We have choices to make, as individuals, and as leaders of the nursing profession. We can choose to help drive and shape the changes needed to realize the potential of this framework, or we can decide to wait and see what happens. We must find the courage and the vision to move nursing and healthcare into this knowledge-intense, interdisciplinary future. We end this series as we started it, with a quote from Peter Drucker, who said: "The best way to cope with the radically changing future is to help shape it."