LAUSR

BACKGROUND New emerging technologies, health globalization, demographic change, new healthcare paradigms, advances in healthcare delivery and social networking will change the needs of patients in the future and consequently will require that new knowledge, competence and skill sets be acquired by nurses. METHOD Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology, focusing on the enriched CATWOE and PQR elements of the root definitions, combined with our own developed "Too much - Too little constraint" approach was used to devise impending knowledge, competence and skill sets. RESULTS The analysis revealed ten needs among patients of the future, 63 constraints and 18 knowledge, competence and skill sets for the future nurse. CONCLUSION The completed study showed that SSM is an appropriate tool for high level structuring of a "messy" real-world problem situation to meet prospective nursing challenges.