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

In his speech to Congress last night, President Obama referred to “doctors and health care providers.” I’m not sure why he used this language and I may be splitting hairs, but some people might question why he wouldn’t consider physicians to be “health care providers.” Perhaps it’s because physicians hate the phrase. I have heard more than one physician object to it, even when it’s intended to represent all of the people who are involved in providing health care to people. Physicians seem to find it demeaning. It’s almost as if they don’t want to be part of the team—they want to be apart from it and always in the lead, even if they aren’t best suited to be the one leading the team (for example, when a patient with mental health and complex social problems is being seen by an interdisciplinary team that is headed by a social worker who is the best person to coordinate the patient’s care). […]