As fall is in the air, you may be reflecting on the 90-day progress of the new graduates who started in June, or perhaps you are preparing your quarterly goal report or collaborating with colleagues in academia to coordinate student and clinical group placements for the fall semester. It is indeed a busy time. Yes, the crisp fall air is energizing, and there is a lot on our plates!

As nursing professional development (NPD) practitioners this is an ideal time to evaluate the status of our goals and metrics that contribute to organizational strategic goals. NPD practitioners provide value-added service to healthcare organizations. It is our obligation to evaluate the impact of our work and convey that impact to leaders and decision makers in our organizations. This demonstrates communication of evaluation results as stated in Standard 6, Evaluation of our NPD Standards of Practice. We must communicate the return on investment (ROI) we provide-including cost savings and cost avoidance. External dissemination of ROI advances our specialty as stated in Standard 16, Mentorship/Advancing the Profession of our NPD Standards of Professional Performance (Harper & Maloney, 2016).

As I meet with NPD practitioners across the country, I frequently hear about the challenge of determining ROI. Yet it is imperative for us to determine the ROI of our work and communicate it broadly. It is essential to use the language that business enterprise leaders understand in order to demonstrate alignment with organizational goals and metrics. This alignment also increases the NPD practitioner's credibility with decision makers. This demonstrates Standard 12, Leadership, the NPD practitioner "collaborates with other stakeholders to ensure educational programs are aligned with organizational goals and strategic plan" (Harper & Maloney, 2016, p. 50). As an example, NPD colleagues have shared that, by communicating results of increased new graduate retention as a result of their nurse residency program, they have maintained the annual program budget.

We have colleagues in our organization and in our specialty who can assist us in determining the impact of our work. This includes our colleagues in human resources, finance, quality, and risk management. It also includes our NPD colleagues as evidenced by the columns and articles in this issue. This issue of JNPD features research on nursing residency programs, increasing effectiveness through mindfulness, strengthening partnerships with our colleagues in academia, and mitigating bullying in the workplace. I encourage you to read what our colleagues are implementing and consider contacting authors to continue the ROI discussion.

As we continue to address the daily urgent requests and make progress on quarterly and annual goals, let's plan to communicate our results internally and share our lessons learned externally with our NPD colleagues.

Reference