As ACA Under Threat, Dawning Awareness of a Law’s Many Provisions

by matsuyuki/via Flickr

Nurses reflect the American population’s variety, and this means that many nurses support the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and many would like it repealed, whatever the replacement might be.

Like many Americans, nurses may have a broad ideological or analytical perspective on the pros and cons of the ACA or other health policy issues. Or they may choose for or against complex legislation on the basis of a single issue—like abortion funding, or insurance access for a husband or daughter with a preexisting condition, or whether they believe staffing issues can be blamed on their hospital administration or an ACA provision.

But it’s been my experience as an editor at AJN and a citizen that many people don’t really know that the ACA has multiple provisions that address quality and access issues at every level of health care.

The futures of these provisions are all in question as the Trump administration and a Republican-led Congress prepare to hack away at the ACA without a clear replacement plan.

With a kind of pre-obituary fervor, the media is beginning to pay attention to the changes the ACA brought about now that many may soon disappear—so, for seemingly the first time, are many Democratic politicians, who it’s now clear did very little to sell the ACA to their […]

2017-01-20T09:12:42-05:00January 20th, 2017|health care policy, Nursing|5 Comments
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Will Congress Listen? Americans Don’t Want ACA Repealed Without Replacement

By Daniel X. O’Neil/via Flickr

Congressional Republicans are moving quickly to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but have yet to offer a replacement plan or indicate when one might be introduced. The possibility that more than 20 million Americans who gained health insurance through the ACA may lose their coverage is a rising concern among health care providers and patients alike. The ANA detailed its Principles for Health System Transformation in a letter to President-elect Donald Trump last month, advocating for “reforms that would guarantee access to high-quality, affordable health care for all,” and the American Medical Association sent an open letter to members of Congress last week urging them to develop a replacement plan before making any changes to the existing law.

Voters—including Trump supporters who have health insurance through the ACA—are also voicing surprise and disapproval that the current law might be repealed without a replacement. The Kaiser Family Foundation conducted focus groups of working class supporters of Mr. Trump from Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania who have insurance through the ACA marketplaces or Medicaid. The nonprofit organization’s president and chief executive, Drew Altman, detailed the results of the focus groups in an op-ed in the New York Times on January 5. Mr. Altman noted that while participants said they were disappointed in the ACA, they were “afraid they […]

2017-12-12T15:47:59-05:00January 13th, 2017|health care policy, Public health|6 Comments
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AJN in July: Opioids and Chronic Pain, Moral Distress, Prediabetes, More

CE Feature: “Appropriate Use of Opioids in Managing Chronic Pain.”

Unintentional death related to prescription opioids has been identified as a public health crisis, owing in part to such factors as insufficient professional training and medication overprescription, misuse, and diversion. The authors discuss current best practices for prescribing opioids for chronic pain, emphasizing patient assessment and essential patient teaching points regarding safe medication use, storage, and disposal, and after you find a more permanent solution people could totally quit opioids by using a detox methods that goes from medicine to even a detox tea like leptinteatox. There are some medicines or supplements that are more easy to use, depending on the problem, like the peruvian brew, that helps with erectile dysfunction and is pretty safe. After that you only need to be careful with stds diseases you can go and test at https://www.stdaware.com/chlamydia-test.

CE Feature: “Moral Distress: A Catalyst in Building Moral Resilience.”

Moral distress is a pervasive problem in nursing: an inability to act in alignment with one’s moral values is detrimental not only to the nurse’s well-being but also to patient care and clinical practice as […]

2017-05-26T00:08:51-04:00June 24th, 2016|career, health care policy, Nursing, nursing research, pain management, Patients|0 Comments
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Intimate Partner Violence: ‘Troubling Knowledge and Practice Gaps’ among Rural Providers

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Table 8. Perceived self-efficacy on a 1-to-5 scale (mean score above 2.5 indicates greater sense of self-efficacy). Table 8. Perceived self-efficacy on a 1-to-5 scale (higher score indicates greater self-efficacy).

Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a widespread health and social problem in the United States, affecting an estimated one in three women during her lifetime.

Health care providers can make a critical difference in the lives of these women, yet a lack of IPV-related knowledge, negative attitudes and beliefs, and low rates of screening are common. And women in rural areas face particular challenges.

To learn more about rural providers with regard to IPV, nurse researchers Karen Roush and Ann Kurth conducted a study. They report their findings in this month’s CE–Original Research feature, “Intimate Partner Violence: The Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors of Rural Health Care Providers.” Here’s an overview:

Methods: Health care providers working in a large rural health network were asked to complete electronic surveys that examined their IPV-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Descriptive and correlational statistical analyses of the data were conducted.
Results: A total of 93 providers returned completed surveys. In general, the respondents demonstrated good overall knowledge, judicious attitudes, and beliefs congruent with […]

2016-11-21T13:01:08-05:00June 10th, 2016|health care policy, Nursing, nursing research, Public health|0 Comments
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Recent Decline in U.S. Opioid Prescriptions: Good News But Some Concerns

by frankieleon/ via flickr by frankieleon/ via flickr

It was widely reported in the past week that there have been steady declines in the number of opioid prescriptions in the U.S. for the past three years, with the declines the steepest in some of the states considered to have the worst opioid misuse crises.

This is good news, suggesting that efforts to address some problem areas like renegade pain clinics prescribing for profit, patients who go from doctor to doctor seeking opioid prescriptions, and the diversion of legitimate opioid prescriptions may be starting to bear fruit.

A balanced overview of the situation can be found in this New York Times article. The authors also acknowledge that patients in pain are now facing new hurdles to pain relief, quoting the director of one prominent medical school’s program on pain research education and policy: “The climate has definitely shifted. . . . It is now one of reluctance, fear of consequences and encumbrance with administrative hurdles. A lot of patients who are appropriate candidates for opioids have been caught up in that response.”

Much of the reporting on the opioid epidemic lumps all people who take opioids into one big statistical brew. While startling and alarming numbers about overdoses from legal and illegal opioids steal the headlines, little media and scholarly analysis focuses on the lower […]

2016-11-21T13:01:12-05:00May 26th, 2016|health care policy, Nursing, nursing perspective, pain management, patient experience, patient safety, Patients|1 Comment
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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