Contents: Nurses, nursing, and the health care system -- Nursing issues; a call to political action -- The nurse practitioner movement: recurring issues -- Canadian health care system -- Innovation and contemporary nursing leadership -- Health and nursing policy: a matter of politics, power, and professionalism -- Policy as the lever for effecting change -- International council of nurses -- Canadian nurses association -- Canadian provincial and territorial professional associations and colleges -- International regulation: nursing in Germany and the Netherlands -- Undergraduate education: development and politics -- Graduate education -- Nursing competence: constructing persons and a form of life -- Nursing technology and informatics: an easy or uneasy alliance? -- The realities of Canadian nursing research -- Issues arising from the nature of nurses' work and workplaces - Unionization: collective bargaining in nursing -- Ethical and legal issues in nursing -- Issues of gender and power: the significance attributed to nurses' work -- The consumer movement -- Violence and abuse: ending the silence -- Environmental health and nursing -- When difference matters: the politics of privilege and marginality -- Challenges for the new millennium: nursing in first nations communities -- Opening the conversation: dilemmas and possibilities of spirituality and spiritual care -- Professional, practice, and power issues:thinking back, looking ahead