We won! To follow up on my last post: At a debate today at the Royal College of Nursing’s so-called “fringe session” at its annual International Nursing Research Conference, Elizabeth Anionwu, emeritus professor of nursing at Thames Valley University in Middlesex (near London), joined me in arguing in opposition to the statement, “research should be published in the highest impact journals available.” […]
Is it any coincidence that AJN recently heard from editorial board member Michael Desjardins and contributing editor Jane Seley about ways physicians and the mainstream media remain blind to the cutting-edge work being done by nurses in developing new models of care for the elderly and the chronically ill, including those with diabetes? This is a narrative that has to change if our health care system is going to face the challenges coming its way. […]
On February 25-27, 2009, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened the “Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public” in Washington, DC, to advance the science, understanding, and progress of integrative medicine (“health care that addresses together the mental, emotional, and physical aspects of the healing process”).
I’ll cut right to the chase—I have a problem with the term “integrative medicine,” and I’m glad to report that I wasn’t alone. On day one a number of the 650 diverse practitioners chimed in about the lack of inclusiveness in that terminology. Dr. Beverly Malone, the CEO of the National League for Nursing, voiced a strong statement that the term was not inclusive and requested that “integrative health care” be used instead. She reminded everyone of the historically critical role nursing and other health care professionals have played in the development of this model of care. By the end of the meeting the consensus was that the field should be called integrative health—not CAM, not integrative medicine. […]
I was delighted to see President Obama nominate nurse Mary Wakefield to head up the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) (see my posting about this on February 20th at www.disruptivewomen.net). I was expecting him to understand the value of having the nursing perspective represented in meetings focused on health care reform. So I am quite disappointed to be told by colleagues that there will only be a token nurse at today’s Health Care Reform Summit. Lots of physicians and insurers are there, but only the president of the American Nurses Association will represent nursing. (While I expect that Wakefield will be there, she will not be there to represent nursing.) My message to the president and those he has charged to lead health care reform: You can’t reform health care without nurses. And nurses have a lot of solutions to our ailing health care system. For examples of these solutions, look at the American Academy of Nursing’s Raise the Voice Campaign.
–Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, Editor-in-Chief
I adore nurses. If I thought I could handle the math (or another round of schooling), I might become a nurse. I respect the profession and understand that 95% of the hands-on care provided by our health care system is provided by nurses, not physicians.
That said (and I know this is going to irritate a lot of people), I think that the nurse who describes her- or himself as a “nurse writer” (or a nurse poet, nurse researcher, nurse attorney, and so on) is doing a disservice to both the writer and the profession. To me (and not to some of my colleagues here who are nurses, I hasten to add), adding “nurse” before “writer” is a bit of a cop-out. […]