As you might know, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) last month proposed letting advanced practice registered nurses practice to the full extent of their education and training at all VA facilities. The VA wants to hear from the public about the proposal that would help veterans get better access to care more quickly.
Let your voice be heard, and encourage colleagues and friends to weigh in as well! If you would like some ideas for what to say, please see suggestions below. Feel free to cut and paste, or personalize.
To assure our nation’s veterans receive high-quality care when and where they need it, our country needs all our health professionals able to practice to the full extent of their education and training. That is why I am for the proposed rule by the Veterans Health Administration (RIN 2900–AP44-Advanced Practice Registered Nurses). This rule will improve veterans’ access to care by removing the barriers that keep advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) from providing care they are trained and able to provide. I believe that acting in the best interest of our veterans means that you should allow all APRNs to do what they can: nurse practitioners; clinical nurse specialists; certified registered nurse anesthetists; and certified nurse-midwives.
As a [nurse, nurse champion, citizen who cares about veterans], with [family member, spouse, friend] who has served in the armed forces, I urge you to approve this proposed rule.
Funded by the HRSA Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP), the AK GILD program is a partnership between Southcentral Foundation’s Nuka System of Care and the University of Alaska Anchorage, School of Allied Health.
The HRSA Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program supports the development of a health care workforce that improves health outcomes for older adults by integrating geriatrics with primary care, maximizing patient and family engagement, and transforming the healthcare system.
Advance knowledge and skills in addressing the needs of older adults and caregivers at the individual, community, and population levels.
Promote innovative practice models to enhance cultural competency, partnership among disciplines, and patient-centered care.
Use interdisciplinary training opportunities to build leaders in evidence-based interventions for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia (ADRD).
Designed for health professionals, direct service professionals, family/caregivers, and advocates.
Applicants must have a long-term professional or personal goal to focus on an aspect of leadership in geriatrics.
Following completion of the program, leaders will receive a University of Alaska Anchorage Workforce Credential in Geriatrics.
Health care is more complex than ever, chronic diseases are becoming a major problem, and cost, access and quality are increasingly scrutinized. Nursing has been changing and continues to change to adapt to these changes and needs. This program will discuss in depth the changing roles and opportunities for nurses in health care.
Midwives, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and other non-doctors do as good a job as MDs in the care they deliver — and patients often like them better, a World Health Organization team reported on Thursday.
These non-physicians are especially effective in delivering babies, taking care of people infected with the AIDS virus, and helping people care for chronic diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure, the team reported in a WHO bulletin.
The findings extend from the poorest nations to the United States and Europe, they said. While some physician groups have resisted wider use of such professionals, they should embrace them because they are often less expensive to deploy and are far more willing to work in rural areas, the WHO experts said.
Anyone who has spent time in a hospital or emergency clinic setting knows that nurses are vital to successful patient interactions, data collection and healthcare assessments.
They’re the ones doing the intake on health issues, taking blood pressure and temperature readings, asking a variety of questions while eyeballing a patient’s demeanor and assessing pain issues. They are the front line before a physician arrives on the scene, as well as the back-end support, reviewing discharge instructions on everything from activity to prescription to insight on when to call regarding further issues.
So it only makes sense that nurses should play an integral role in the development of mobile health tools, as they know what’s needed in the patient treatment and assessment process, the data that’s critical for true evaluation and can gauge a patient’s emotional status.
NPs are the providers of choice for millions of Americans, with more than 205,000 NPs currently licensed in the United States. That number is expected to increase to 244,000 by 2025, according to statistics released by the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) in anticipation of National Nurse Practitioner Week 2015.
As winter comes yet again, who can forget what an incredible place we call home? Alaska is a place like no other, largely because of its rich, diverse cultural heritage. And as with the anger over the renaming of Denali, outsiders often have no concept of what Alaskans, from all different ethnic and racial backgrounds, want and need. However, even within Alaska a blindness can exist.
I have always wanted to help people, and as a child, the process of helping appeared very straightforward. The people I knew were white Americans. So I began trying to help by giving other people all I knew: The things that I, as a white American wanted and needed. As I traveled as an international aide volunteer and tourist, contact with a world bigger than the one I had known as a child began to expand my mind. In a small way I became aware of the complexities of international, interethnic, and interracial aid. I also stumbled upon a problem. Although my desire to help had always come from a good and sincere place, a disease I did not even know that I had stifled it: White Blindness.
The public trusts nurses to care for them and to teach them how to care for themselves and for those they love. But a 2012 AARP/United Hospital Fund report funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation, Home Alone: Family Caregivers Providing Complex Chronic Care, shows there is a big disconnect. In this first nationally representative study of families providing complex care activities, almost half reported that they had provided medical/nursing treatments, including injections, wound care, administering multiple medications, managing colostomies, and giving tube feedings and nebulizer treatments—among many other tasks that nursing students find daunting when they are first learning how to do them.
Family caregivers are expected to step right in, with little to no instruction or support. Most (nearly 7 out of 10) of those they cared for did not get a home visit by a health care professional, despite multiple encounters with the health care system. Many of these family caregivers said they had to learn how to do complex tasks on their own. For example, close to 60% had to learn about at least some medications on their own. More than a third performed wound care on their own, but only 36% said a nurse or physician in a hospital had taught them, and only 25% had received teaching from a home care nurse. Many were worried about making a mistake or harming the person they were trying to help.
National nursing education accrediting agencies released a historic joint statement endorsing academic progression to help nurses meet future health care demands. Read the statement: http://bit.ly/1WUgWCI.
Front Street Community Health Center in Juneau has a new permanent nurse practitioner after a year of temporary medical providers.
The health clinic, which caters primarily to people who are homeless, has gone through a lot of growing pains since it separated from Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium two years ago.
Cynthia Mattoni was a temporary nurse practitioner at the Front Street Community Health Center before she decided to apply for the permanent position. She’s been on the job since Oct. 1 and is very busy.
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