It is essential that nurses, and especially nurse managers, understand financial management because budgets have the capacity to influence patient care, ability to meet unit goals and institute needed changes. Although we’ve only talked very briefly about developing budget justifications, the capacity for building strong arguments to retain existing services and to add services influences the quality of patient care.  Nurses need to be at the table for these discussions and must be sufficiently fluent in the language of budgets and finance to participate in an informed way.