Gallup Poll: Power Elite Believes Nurses Should Have More Say in Policy, Management
Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN interim editor-in-chief
Last week I attended a press conference in Washington, D.C., where the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released a Gallup poll it had commissioned to find out what 1,500 opinion leaders (or as Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport put it, “the people who run things in this country”) think about nursing leadership and nurses’ influence on health care reform.
It’s no surprise that most (69%) see nurses as having little influence on health reform. Nurses ranked at the very bottom—immediately below patients, who were below physicians in the rankings. Mary Naylor, an innovative leader from the University of Pennsylvania and part of a reaction panel, hit the nail on the head: “Everyone should be concerned that the largest group of health care providers and the consumers are the least influential.” (Those seen as having the greatest influence are government officials and insurance executives—no surprise there, either.)
In identifying what impedes nurses’ ability to be in leadership roles, here’s how the opinion leaders weighed-in:
- 69.3% noted that nurses are not seen as important decision makers as compared with physicians.
- 68% noted nurses were not seen as revenue generators like physicians.
- 62.4% think nurses are focused on acute care and not prevention or health maintenance.
- 55.8% think nurses lack a single voice in speaking on national […]
