Nurses spend more time with patients than most other types of providers and have unique insight into patient care and the the healthcare system.
As nurses, we should have something to say about health care and insurance reform.
Below is a press release we received for an important and timely December 3rd event on the future of nursing, including links to attend the forum by live Webcast or to follow it on Twitter.
Initiative Exploring the Future of Nursing Convenes National Forum in Philadelphia
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing, at the Institute of Medicine (www.iom.edu/nursing) will hold the second of three national forums on December 3 in Philadelphia. Participants including committee chair Donna Shalala discuss how to improve the delivery of medical treatment for Americans in Community Health, Public Health, Primary Care, and Long-Term Care settings across the country. This forum will look at opportunities in which nurses – who are key front-line providers of care – can play a role in ensuring patients in all settings receive the best possible care.
**A live webcast of the meeting will be available via www.thefutureofnursing.org**
**Follow the forum live on Twitter at http://twitter.com/FutureofNursing**
As the Senate debates health care reform legislation, lobbyists across the political spectrum are busy trying to make themselves heard both by legislators and the American public. In an attempt to blunt the impact of the numerous campaigns aimed at killing or gutting the legislation, the White House has released a video called “Who Do You Trust?”, in which Rebecca Patton, president of the American Nurses Association (ANA), appears with Joe Biden and Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
But questions do remain. Despite the obvious need for many of the insurance reforms proposed in the plan, the Democrats have yet to fully address the question of how this will be paid for by real changes in the delivery of care or real limits on the influence of pharmaceutical companies or medical device manufacturers.
How, for example, can cost controls ever occur in a system dominated by a fee-for-service model in which physicians’ income is often directly related to the numbers of tests and procedures they recommend, one in which they are rarely bound or directed by evidence-based guidelines or protocols? Would physicians’ organizations like the one represented in the White House video ever support a plan in which most physicians were, like most nurses, on salary? Why is that unthinkable?
Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN interim editor-in-chief. Editor’s update: Shawn is now the editor-in-chief
I recently went away for a “girls’ weekend” with some old friends. We’ve known each other for over 40 years (where DID the years go?). We met as freshmen in college, all of us in the nursing program. We’ve stayed close friends, shoring each other up during bad times and celebrating the good times. We don’t see each other so often, but when we do, the essential personality traits of those fresh-faced nursing students emerge just as they were 40 year ago; we mesh together easily whenever we meet. […]
By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor
A few weeks ago I attended an orientation provided by the New York City Department of Health for a school-based H1N1 vaccination program. Years ago I worked as a school nurse here in New York and I thought participating in the program would be a great way to keep up some clinical skills and spend time with patients. A physician from the bureau of immunization gave an informative lecture reviewing the epidemiology, signs and symptoms, prevention, and treatment of influenza.
There were about 100 nurses in attendance, many of them new graduates who were unable to find full-time work. During a break one of the new grads said to me, “why do we have to sit through this irrelevant lecture?” I couldn’t believe it. If you’re administering a medication, I told her, of course you’d want to understand how it works and why you’re giving it. In addition you need to be able to explain it to the patient or their parent. She rolled her eyes and walked away. And I thought, once again: this is why nurses are not taken seriously as professionals.