By Katheren Koehn, MA, RN, who is a member of the AJN editorial board
It was with great regret that I read of the passing of Joyce C. Clifford last week. She was a nurse whose career as a nurse administrator and leader was spent empowering nurses, from the bedside to the boardroom. Much has been written since her passing about her nursing leadership at the administrative level. I would like to take some time to recognize her as a nurse leader who empowered nurses at the bedside.
I first learned of the work of Joyce C. Clifford from a staff nurse who’d moved from Boston to Minneapolis in the late 1980s. The entire time this nurse and I worked together she was in mourning for the hospital and job she’d left behind in Boston. Almost every day she talked about how wonderful Beth Israel was and how great it had been to be a staff nurse there. She talked about primary nursing, nurse autonomy, and interdisciplinary respect. At the time, none of these terms were familiar to me, but I knew she was telling me that “my” hospital, where she now worked, could never measure up to the fabulous BI.
I next learned of the work of Dr. Clifford through the book Code Green: Money-Driven Hospitals and the Dismantling of Nursing by Dana Beth Weinberg. In this book, Ms. Weinberg described the nursing environment that had been created under Dr. Clifford’s leadership:
When Beth Israel Hospital adopted primary nursing on its inpatient floors in the 1970s, the hospital also adopted a host of new organizational arrangements. The architects of Beth Israel’s professional nursing practice argued that by meeting nurses’ needs, the hospital simultaneously met those of patients. Beth Israel organized itself around nurses’ work, supporting and encouraging the work that nurses did with patients.
Organizing a hospital around nurses’ work, encouraging the work that nurses did with patients! Those are sweet words to a staff nurse’s ears. No wonder my nurse colleague was mourning the job she’d left when she moved to Minneapolis! Read the rest of this entry ?
CMS Proposing New Hospital Regulations—How Will the Changes Affect Your Delivery of Care?
October 18, 2011The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed revisions to the
hospital Conditions of Participation, the criteria hospitals must meet to be reimbursed for services by Medicare/Medicaid. The changes are needed to remove unnecessary and burdensome regulations that create barriers in care delivery. The changes, if adopted, include:
There is a 60-day comment period. The CMS would like your comments. The proposed regulation can be found in full via a link on this page near the bottom: http://www.cms.gov/CFCsAndCoPs/06_Hospitals. Or go directly to the PDF here.
To submit a comment, visit www.regulations.gov, enter the ID number CMS-3244-P, and click on “Submit a Comment.”
Posted in professional identity | Tagged APRN, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, CMS, comment period, Conditions of Participation, nurse practitioners | 6 Comments »