2. Identify a legislative issue, researching it and either visiting a legislator or writing an advocacy letter.
Dear Congress,
“Finally if quality health care is to be achieved, the medical liability system and our litigious society must be recognized as potential barriers to systematic efforts to uncover and learn from mistakes that are made in healthcare”(Marquis, B. L.,2011, p.357)., 2003).
Our legislative branch should never condone the unfair and unsafe practices from hospitals. When hospitals do not make it their priority to keep nurses safe, they are failing their patients. When our patients are not safe then nurses are not maintaining their integrity and this can create the onslaught of never have been events that the IOM has extrapolated) find sources such as falling, catheter associated urinary tract infections, pressure ulcers, etc. Events that the IOM has listed as events that are preventable when staffing is adequate and when necessary harm can be avoided. The IOM has posed the template of safety
What will nurses do to prevent harmful events from occurring that could have been prevented? What events could be avoided to enable that patient to heal from his disease and to prevent medication errors, falls, infections, Nurses have created the six points of QSEN, which are …. Which severs as principle template that guides our nurse practice. When nurses are injured or if patients are affected by “never events” an organization is at fault and reimbursement will not follow. More importantly patients and families are being affected, the IOM has made nurses accountable for never events in the Institute of Medicine’s report. “Never Events arose among the array of safety initiatives spawned by the 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, To Err is Human. Kohn, et al, (1999) reported the alarming finding that the number of Americans who die each year from medical errors ranges from 44,000-98,000. Subsequent reports have validated little improvement in quality outcomes (Landrigan, et al, 2010) (Industry Research: Download Healthcare Industry Research, Surveys, White Papers, and More. AMN Healthcare.(n.d), paragraph 4).”
According to the ANA, when hospitals participate in adequate nursing staff to patient load, they are following” Federal regulation has been in place for some time, 42 Code of Federal Regulations (42CFR 482.23(b) which requires hospitals certified to participate in Medicare to “have adequate numbers of licensed registered nurses, licensed practical (vocational) nurses, and other personnel to provide nursing care to all patients as needed”.
However, we need laws to enact change. We need laws that will be put in place that will change the requirement that hospitals have in current place which is regulation not being guided by Congress but by scrupulous or unscrupulous management with no prior training or guidance to how to design a safe nurse-to-patient ratio. Congress has ignored the Registered Nurse staffing Act which would make it a law by all fifty states to maintain adequate staffing measures for hospitals instead we have left it up to individual states to guide optimal nurse staffing appropriate to patients’ needs.
I am a registered nurse and I am reaching out to Congress to transform “ The Registered Nurse Practice Act. Laws are not being made to help change the current political temperature that is scalding the nursing profession. When nursing shortages are experienced in hospitals patients suffer and so does the credibility of the hospital. There is no-win win situation in this situation.
But we nurses can win when Congress does its part by enacting the The Registered Nurse Practice Act. This act guarantees that nurses will be safe which makes our patients’ safer. In the Nature of Nursing as Virginia Henderson has stated,
“The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will, or knowledge. And to do this in such a way as to help him gain independence as rapidly as possible. She must in a sense, get inside the skin of each of her patients in order to know what he needs (Nursing Theorists. (2011, October).”
Sincerely
A DISGRUNTLED nurse who wants change!
Industry Research: Download Healthcare Industry Research, Surveys, White Papers, and More. AMN Healthcare.(n.d). Retrieved from
https://www.amnhealthcare.com/industry-research/preventing-never-events-evidence-based-nurse-staffing/
Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2011). Leadership Roles and Management Functions in Nursing: Theory and Application. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Nursing Theorists. (2011, October). Retrieved from http://currentnursing.com/nursing_theory/nursing_theorists.html Nursing Theorists
https://secure3.convio.net/ana/site/Advocacy;jsessionid=00000000.app330b?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=451&NONCE_TOKEN=C4D42F735AF4B1E8450AEB4102CE6F01
The role of the student (for example participant, author of letter, etc.)
1. A description of how this is a professional nursing and/or nursing advocacy activity
This political advocacy activity is a political action as I am trying to reach out to Congress to enact laws that will enable the voices of nurses to be heard. Many times nurses are not aware of the political impact they can have. Much of the time preparing for NCLEX, we are not pushed to have a VOICE when it comes to being an assertive asset to the changes within the profession. Writing to Congress is behaving as an advocate for the profession and for patients and makes us ethically responsible. We are held by ethical principles such as beneficence and non-malfeasance. The Nurse Practice Act has drawn out for us and for us to abide by these ethics. Engaging in political advocacy makes me feel like a valued representative of the nursing profession rather than just an assembly line worker of an agency.
2. A description of how this is a professional nursing and/or nursing advocacy activity.
Political advocacy activities help propel the nursing profession forward as it is a guidance of how nurses should advocate and support patients. Patient centered care as Jean Watson has emphasized. By joining and ANA and clicking this link below you can be an advocate for your state, county:
http://nursingworld.org/
https://secure3.convio.net/ana/site/Advocacy;jsessionid=00000000.app330b?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=451&NONCE_TOKEN=C4D42F735AF4B1E8450AEB4102CE6F01
These are the representatives that represent you and that are in your Congressional district!
Tell Congress: Keep patients safe – support the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act!
Choose your message recipients:
Message Recipient E-mail
Kirsten E. Gillibrand
Senator (D-New York)
Charles ‘Chuck’ E. Schumer Senator (D-New York)
Nydia M. Velazquez
Representative (D-New York District 7)
https://secure3.convio.net/ana/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&cmd=display&page=RepSelect&id=451
