Legislative Update

WARN Legislative Update
December 2010
Judy Klaver

ARN News

RNF Grant Opportunities
If you are embarking on a new research project that advances rehabilitation nursing, be sure to visit the ARN website for a listing of several grant funding opportunities offered through the Rehabilitation Nursing Foundation (RNF) and jointly with other nursing organizations.  Research funding is available for the purpose of advancing rehabilitation nursing through education and research. Each year, the RNF Research Fund Committee solicits and reviews research proposals addressing clinical practice, educational, or administrative dimensions of rehabilitation nursing.

Check out the ARN website soon because the RNF deadline for accepting research grant proposals is February 1, 2011. Funding begins January 2012.   

Nurse In Washington Internship (NIWI) March 13 – 13, 2011
Learn more about public policy or advocate for rehabilitation nurses on Capitol Hill. The Nurses in Washington Internship (NIWI) provides nurses with the opportunity to learn how to influence health care through the legislative and regulatory processes. For more information about NIWI, visit http://www.nursing-alliance.org/niwi.cfm.  All interested candidates should download the ARN NIWI Scholarship Application, complete the form, and return all requested information via E-mail to mbbenner@connect2amc.com. Application Deadline: January 7, 2011.

ARN is committed to impacting healthcare as a leader in influencing rehabilitation public policy. As a part of this commitment we want to ensure that our members have the knowledge and opportunity to participate in the creation of public policy and advocacy related to rehabilitation nursing.  In that spirit, we are pleased to announce the ARN NIWI Scholarship. NIWI provides nurses with the opportunity to learn how to influence health care through the legislative and regulatory processes.  Participants learn from health policy experts and government officials, network with other nurses, and visit members of Congress.  For more information about NIWI, visit http://www.nursing-alliance.org/niwi.cfm.
The ARN NIWI Scholarship will cover registration, lodging and travel expenses for one ARN member who meets the scholarship eligibility criteria.  Two scholarships will be available in 2011. The ARN Health Policy Committee will review all applications and select the applicant deemed most appropriate as the award recipient.
Eligible nurses will be:

To apply for the scholarship, please submit the following materials:

Your application must be E-mailed to Mary Beth Benner at mbbenner@connect2amc.com. Applications must be received by January 7, 2011 to be considered. If you have questions, please contact Mary Beth Benner by phone, 800/229-7530, or E-mail, mbbenner@connect2amc.com.

 

Seeking Dynamic Leaders for 2011 ARN Elections
Influence the Future of Rehabilitation Nursing
ARN strives to provide visionary leadership that reflects the diverse interests and needs of its members. In order to realize this vision, dynamic leaders are needed to serve on the Board of Directors and the Nominating and Leadership Development Committee. These members play a key role in ensuring adherence to the ARN Strategic Plan and in turn influencing the rehabilitation nursing profession.

Nominations are now open for the following positions:
• President-elect (1 year followed by 1 year as President)
• Secretary-Treasurer (2 year term)
•Two Directors (3 year term)
• Nominating and Leadership Development Committee (3 year term)
Specific information about open positions, eligibility criteria and candidate applications will be available on the ARN web site www.rehabnurse.org, as of December 1, 2010.  All candidate applications must be received by March 1, 2011.

The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health

Released: October 5, 2010

Type: Consensus Report

Topics: Health Care Workforce, Quality and Patient Safety, Health Services, Coverage, and Access
With more than 3 million members, the nursing profession is the largest segment of the nation’s health care workforce. Working on the front lines of patient care, nurses can play a vital role in helping realize the objectives set forth in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, legislation that represents the broadest health care overhaul since the 1965 creation of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. A number of barriers prevent nurses from being able to respond effectively to rapidly changing health care settings and an evolving health care system. These barriers need to be overcome to ensure that nurses are well- positioned to lead change and advance health.

In 2008, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the Institute Of Medicine (IOM) launched a two-year initiative to respond to the need to assess and transform the nursing profession. The IOM appointed the Committee on the RWJF Initiative on the Future of Nursing, at the IOM, with the purpose of producing a report that would make recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing. Through its deliberations, the committee developed four key messages:

The United States has the opportunity to transform its health care system, and nurses can and should play a fundamental role in this transformation. However, the power to improve the current regulatory, business, and organizational conditions does not rest solely with nurses; government, businesses, health care organizations, professional associations, and the insurance industry all must play a role. Working together, these many diverse parties can help ensure that the health care system provides seamless, affordable, quality care that is accessible to all and leads to improved health outcomes.

Below is a summary of the four key recommendations from the report.

1) Nurses should practice to the full extent of their education and training.
While most nurses are registered nurses (RNs), more than a quarter million nurses are advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), who have master’s or doctoral degrees and pass national certification exams. Nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists, and nurse midwives all are licensed as APRNs.

Because licensing and practice rules vary across states, the regulations regarding scope-of-practice—which defines the activities that a qualified nurse may perform—have varying effects on different types of nurses in different parts of the
country. For example, while some states have regulations that allow nurse practitioners to see patients and prescribe medications without a physician’s supervision, a majority of states do not. Consequently, the tasks nurse practitioners
are allowed to perform are determined not by their education and training but by the unique
state laws under which they work.

The report offers recommendations for a variety of stakeholders—from state legislators to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to the Congress—to ensure that nurses can practice to the full extent of their education and training. The federal government is particularly well suited to promote reform of states’ scope-of-practice laws by sharing and providing incentives for the adoption of best practices. One sub-recommendation is directed to the Federal Trade
Commission, which has long targeted anti-competitive conduct in the health care market, including restrictions on the business practices of health care providers, as well as policies that could act as a barrier to entry for new competitors in the market.

High turnover rates among new nurses underscore the importance of transition-to-practice residency programs, which help manage the transition from nursing school to practice and help new graduates further develop the skills needed to deliver safe, quality care. While nurse residency programs sometimes are supported in hospitals and large health systems, they focus

2) Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression.
To ensure the delivery of safe, patient-centered care across settings, the nursing education system must be improved. Patient needs have become more complicated, and nurses need to attain requisite competencies to deliver high-quality
care. These competencies include leadership, health policy, system improvement, research and evidence-based practice, and teamwork and collaboration, as well as competency in specific content areas including community and public health
and geriatrics. Nurses also are being called upon to fill expanding roles and to master technological tools and information management systems while collaborating and coordinating care across teams of health professionals.

Nurses must achieve higher levels of education and training to respond to these increasing demands. Education should include opportunities for seamless transition into higher degree programs—from licensed practical nurse (LPN)/licensed vocational nurse (LVN) diplomas; to the associate’s (ADN) and bachelor’s (BSN) degrees; to master’s, PhD, and doctor of nursing practice (DNP) degrees. Nurses also should be educated with physicians and other health professionals both as students and throughout their careers in lifelong learning opportunities. And to improve the quality of patient care, a greater emphasis must be placed on making the nursing workforce more diverse, particularly in the areas of gender and race/ethnicity.

3) Nurses should be full partners, with physicians and other health care professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States.
Efforts to cultivate and promote leaders within the nursing profession—from the front lines of care to the boardroom—will prepare nurses with the skills needed to help improve health care and advance their profession. As leaders, nurses must act as full partners in redesign efforts, be accountable for their own contributions to delivering high-quality care, and work collaboratively with leaders from other health professions.

Being a full partner involves taking responsibility for identifying problems and areas of system waste, devising and implementing improvement plans, tracking improvement over time, and making necessary adjustments to realize established goals. In the health policy arena, nurses should participate in, and sometimes lead, decision making
and be engaged in health care reform-related implementation efforts. Nurses also should serve actively on advisory boards on which policy decisions are made to advance health systems and improve patient care.

In order to ensure that nurses are ready to assume leadership roles, nursing education programs need to embed leadership-related competencies throughout. In addition, leadership development and mentoring programs need to be made available for nurses at all levels, and a culture that promotes and values leadership needs to be fostered. All nurses must take responsibility for their personal and professional growth by developing leadership competencies and exercising these competencies across all care settings.

4) Effective workforce planning and policy making require better data collection and an improved information infrastructure.

Planning for fundamental, wide-ranging changes in the education and deployment of the nursing workforce will require comprehensive data on the numbers and types of health professionals—including nurses—currently available and re-quired to meet future needs. Once an improved infrastructure for collecting and analyzing workforce data is in place, systematic assessment and projection of workforce requirements by role, skill mix, region, and demographics will be needed to inform changes in nursing practice and education.

The entire The Future of Nursing report can be found at http://www.iom.edu
Click on reports and the type “The Future of Nursing”.

In the January edition we will explore how nurses in the state of Wisconsin are responding to this report.

 

Past Legislative Updates

July 2011 update
May 2011 update
May 2010 update
Februrary 2010 update
Fall 2009 update