National Nurses Week 2005 Celebrates
Nurses' Many Roles, Professional Unity
ANA pushes for greater nursing education funding, improved working conditions
Silver Spring, MD - If you have ever relied on a registered nurse (RN) for recuperative, emergency or follow-up care, or gone to an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) for primary or other health care services, then you may be familiar with the theme of this year's National Nurses Week (May 6-12).
That theme - "Nurses: Many Roles, One Profession" - chosen by the American Nurses Association (ANA), celebrates the wide breadth of roles in nursing practice, as well as nurses' professional unity, their voice and their strength.
"Representing the largest of the health professions, nurses are the 24/7 caregivers who provide expert care in many divergent settings," said ANA President Barbara Blakeney, MS, RN. "Today's RNs not only care for patients in acute-care hospitals, nursing homes and many community settings, as they always have, but they also are actively carving out new roles for themselves in such burgeoning fields as forensic nursing, nursing informatics and public policy."
As Blakeney noted, demand for nurses and nursing services is strong, and it's going to get stronger - since, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the United States currently has a shortage of nearly 150,000 RNs and will be in need of more than 800,000 RNs by the year 2020.
"The good news is that it's an exciting time to be a nurse because not only are there many job opportunities, but there is room to expand and grow as a professional," said Blakeney.
But the concern is that without adequate funding for nursing education, nursing schools will not be able to handle the influx of applicants. For example, despite a significant rise in nursing school applicants in recent years, the National League for Nursing estimates that 125,000 applicants were turned away from nursing programs at all levels last year because of limited faculty, clinical sites and classroom space.
Increased federal funding is needed to reverse this trend, said Blakeney. "That is why ANA has made achieving increased nurse education funding a top priority on its 2005 lobbying agenda. In order to stem the nation's escalating nursing shortage, ANA supports proposals in the Senate and House of Representatives for $175 million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2006 funding for Title VIII nursing workforce development programs, including the Nurse Reinvestment Act. This minimal level of funding is desperately needed in order to keep these programs up and running," she said.
Another chief focus of National Nurses Week this year is on improving the nursing work environment in part to protect the health, welfare and well-being of working nurses but also to make nursing a more attractive profession to potential newcomers. According to Blakeney, unlike workers in many other professions, nurses are more vulnerable to fatigue caused by the common practices of short staffing and forced overtime as well as to injuries sustained as the result of improper patient lifting and handling techniques.
"We need to reduce the hazards in the nursing work environment that are driving many nurses out of the profession, and we need to make nursing safer so that it becomes a more appealing career choice," Blakeney noted. "That's the real key in solving the nursing shortage."
With regard to inadequate staffing, ANA is supporting S. 71, the Registered Nurse Safe Staffing Act of 2005, and HR 1372, the Quality Nursing Care Act of 2005, companion bills that would allow for the development of staffing systems that require the input of direct-care RNs and provide whistleblower protection for RNs who speak out about patient care issues. And to limit the practice of forcing nurses to work overtime, ANA is pushing passage of the Safe Nursing and Patient Care Act of 2005 (H.R. 791), a bill that places restrictions on the number of hours of overtime a nurse may work over a two-week period. (Similar overtime legislation has been passed in 10 states.)
Finally, to draw attention to the area of nurses' health and safety during National Nurses Week, ANA is participating in a May 13 Capitol Hill briefing with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This event is designed to draw legislators' attention to the growing problem of back injuries and musculoskeletal disorders among nurses and how these injuries can be prevented by implementing "No-Manual-Lift" policies and cost-effective assistive lifting devices. The policies are part of ANA's ongoing Handle With Care campaign.
National Nurses Week is celebrated annually from May 6, also known as National Nurses Day, through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.
To learn more about the nursing shortage, go to:
www.nursingworld.org/readroom/fsshortage.htm
To learn more about ANA's Handle with Care campaign, go to:
www.nursingworld.org/handlewithcare
For more on National Nurses Week, go to:
www.nursingworld.org/pressrel/nnw
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The ANA is the only full-service professional organization representing the nation's 2.7 million registered nurses through its 54 constituent member nurses associations. The ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the rights of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Congress and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.