Office of National Nurse
And here I thought I was up on everything to do with nursing. Apparently, there is a movement to create an Office of the National Nurse–and have it be on the same par as the Surgeon General. According to the supporters, this is what the Office of National Nurse would be/would do:
* Elevate the Chief Nurse Officer (CNO) of the US Public Health Service to full time status within the Office of the Surgeon General to become the National Nurse to enhance prevention efforts in all communities.
* Complement the work of the US Surgeon General.
* Promote involvement in the Medical Reserve Corps to improve the health and safety of the community.
* Incorporate proven evidence-based public health education when delivering prevention.
HR 4903 was introduced into the 109th Congress, to make this a reality.
Laura Stokowski MSN, RN testified before the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2020, on the behalf of creating the Office of the National Nurse. She closed her statement with this:
We believe that creating an Office of the National Nurse is a way to bring attention to nursing, to instill pride and to recruit new nurses. But most importantly, it is a way to achieve better health for the citizens of this country by effectively utilizing nurses to improve health outcomes.”
I really haven’t thought too much about this issue, and don’t really have an opinion on it. But realistically, is the ONN really going to make that much of a difference in the health of Americans? That is, is the ONN really going to go to bat and fight the huge agribusinesses that promote junk food, factory farming, and the mass industrial complex that producing food has become? The industrial complex that doesn’t want to hear about the detrimental effects that its products are having not only on health, but on the environment and the degradation of prime farmland?
Is the ONN going to work on exposing the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes, between the FDA and big pharma? Or how the FDA is still working hard to undermine the alternative health community, the availability of supplements, or allowing any sort of health information (notice the word information, not claims to cure diseases) of some of these products?
Is the ONN going to help people get health insurance–for a price they can afford and that provides decent coverage?
Is the ONN going to stop Congress from cutting Medicaid and Medicare payments to practitioners–and this includes advance nurse practitioners as well? Hint–lower payments to clinicians means that fewer and fewer are going to accept patients on Medicaid and Medicare.
Is creating an ONN really going to help nurse recruit? What about nurse retention? Is the ONN really going to do anything about working environments, pay, schedules, abuse, and all the other negatives that nurses in hospitals have to deal with it?
These are issues to think about it, before making sweeping statements about what this position is going to do. Many of the surgeon generals find their hands tied, and do little to nothing by the time their tenure is over. And if a president doesn’t like them, they get the boot.
C. Everett Koop was perhaps the Surgeon General who made the greatest impact, in that he bucked the Reagan administration and attacked the AIDS epidemic head-on. I think Reagan was torn between staying the darling of conservatives and his Hollywood friends dying of AIDS–so closing his eyes and allowing Koop to take the heat was a nice compromise. But aside from Koop, I think most Americans would have a hard time recalling the name of any of the Surgeon Generals, or tying their names with a major inroad in the health of our nation.
Anyway, if you want to read more about the National Nurse:
http://nationalnurse.org/