This final chapter weaves together some of the key focus areas that have made up this ‘journey’, using stories from practice that may provide you with some further insights to guide you on your path to becoming a skilled and experienced nurse.

The second part of this chapter focuses on the fact that, once you enter the profession as a beginning-level nurse, this is not the end of your journey; it is only the first stage of your career. There are many options and learning opportunities that can further your career and assist you to develop into an expert nurse across a range of settings.

The last part of this chapter focuses on how you can contribute to the further development of the nursing profession by role-modelling and promoting nursing, mentoring and supporting others, and developing and sharing your skills and knowledge with new generations of nurses.

Nursing is a diverse and varied profession that is at times rewarding, challenging, happy and sad. Nurses are the most vital cog in the development, delivery and leadership of health services to meet the current and future health needs of society. You have chosen a rewarding and exciting career!

Whatever your interests and motivations, nursing is certain to be a career that rewards, challenges and inspires you. It requires the seamless blending of theoretical and technical knowledge with a way of being and behaving (moral comportment), leading to clinical wisdom or deep understanding that supports the highest possible quality of care for individuals, families and communities. We present a range of nursing knowledge and perspectives that are important for professional nursing practice in contemporary Australian healt hcare, but encourage you to engage in your own reflections about what it means to be and act as a nurse, with the aim of discovering and nurturing your personal passion for nursing (Benner et al. 2010, Gottlieb & Gottlieb 2012, p. 4). This opening chapter sets the scene for your undergraduate nursing journey. We welcome you to the wonderful, dynamic and diverse profession of nursing and encourage some initial thinking about what nursing is, why you have chosen this career and the sort of nurse you hope to be. We also outline the purpose, structure and features of this book, and introduce you to the key concepts and ideas underpinning your learning journey.

This chapter completes the description of the delivery system, focusing on three fundamental categories of providers: hospitals, doctors and nurses. For each of these three categories, recent data regarding the density of these providers with respect to the resident population are reported. These data are provided for the twenty-seven OECD countries analyzed in this book. A particular focus is reserved for the mechanism through which hospital facilities and physicians are remunerated.