Category: Nurse Advocacy

With June officially underway, that means one thing: 2021 Hill Day and ANA’s annual Membership Assembly – ANA’s highest decision-making body – has begun!

There are meetings, events, and dialogue forums all month long for ANA’s constituent/state nurse’s associations voting representatives, organizational affiliates and other select invitees to attend. And in the Policy and Government Affairs world –Hill Day and our main call to action is the capstone event where staff capitalized on the virtual environment this year and opened the event up to all ANA members (registration has officially closed since we hit our max capacity of 500 participants).

It kicks off on June 8 with the Hill Day briefing. For those registered participants, attendance to this briefing is required to receive Continuing Education credits and to attend Hill Day on June 10, so make sure it is on your calendar. During the briefing, you will hear from several speakers as they discuss the issues we will be advocating for, how to conduct a virtual meeting, checking in with your groups, and remarks by ANA President, Dr. Ernest Grant, and this year’s Congressional keynote speaker, Representative Rodney Davis from Illinois. You will receive a lot of information but there is also the chance to ask questions during the briefing, as well as during and after your breakout session.

This year’s Hill Day is on Thursday, June 10. As of the posting of this blog, there are 530 participants and all 50 states will be represented! There are over 300 meetings already scheduled in the House of Representatives and Senate and that number continues to climb.

In advance of the June 8 briefing and your meetings on June 10, ANA will provide the issue briefs regarding the three legislative issues you will be advocating on this year. You can also go to the Membership Assembly portal and download these and other important resources. In short, here are the three bills for this year’s Hill Day:

S. 308/H.R. 1436 – Protecting Providers Everywhere in America (PPE in America Act). This legislation will boost domestic PPE production and promote a more sustainable supply chain by ensuring more predictable, dedicated funding from the Strategic National Stockpile to American manufacturers of PPE.

S. xxx/H.R. 1195 – Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act. This legislation will require the U.S. Department of Labor to establish needed protections from workplace violence in the health care and social services sectors.

S. 1512/H.R. 2903 – Creating Opportunities Now for Necessary and Effective Care Technologies (CONNECT) for Health Act. This legislation will continue the expanded use of telehealth services to deliver cost effective and efficient care to patients.

Overall, we are excited for you to connect with your Members of Congress and their staff again this year – albeit virtually. Share your stories and what you have experienced over the last year – they certainly want to hear them!

Last, but not least, if you are unable to attend Hill Day or missed the cutoff, you still can communicate with your Member of Congress on the PPE in America Act. Please make your voice heard today and help get this important legislative priority passed!

We’ll see those attending this week and for those completing the call to action, make sure you share it on social using #ANAHillDay on Twitter or Facebook.

As the coronavirus pandemic extends into a second year, nurses enter a second year of calling on Congress and the Administration to ensure an adequate supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) and prioritize COVID-19 vaccine distribution for health care providers. On these issues, the American Nurses Association (ANA) will remain a strong, clear voice until COVID-19 is no longer a threat to nurses on the job, wherever they provide care.

Throughout a challenging year of health emergency, though, nurses and their champions have not turned away from the serious workplace issues that pre-date and continue into the COVID-19 era. An example is workplace violence, which is shown to be highly prevalent in healthcare settings, causes harm to nurses and other health care providers, and undermines quality of care.

Violence and other abuses toward nurses are notably underreported. One reason that many nurses do not report incidents of violence is the belief that their experience will not be acted upon effectively by their facility’s leadership. Even so, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in 2016 that violence against health care workers could be as much as 12 times higher than the overall workforce. This is a critical issue from ANA’s perspective, given that nurses are often the frontline providers in these settings.

The GAO concluded that more efforts are needed. Principally, federal workplace safety regulations should be strengthened. On February 22, 2021, Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut introduced a bill, with bipartisan support, that would do just that. H.R. 1195, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act, is almost identical to a measure that passed the House, but was not afforded a vote in the Senate, in 2019.

The bill would require the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to have and enforce specific standards for health care and social service employers. Specifically, OSHA could hold these employers accountable under new safety regulations. The regulations would require health care and social service employers to create violence prevention programs, take concrete steps to reduce the risk of on-site assaults, and employ best practices to encourage reporting and employee engagement in prevention.

ANA has endorsed H.R. 1195, and is working toward speedy passage in the House, followed by Senate action in this Congress. Future posts on Capitol Beat will explore the issue and the legislation in more depth.

For more information about the ANA’s advocacy on workplace violence, click here.

On December 15, 2020, the American Nurses Association (ANA) joined with the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the American Medical Association (AMA) in an open letter urging health care professionals to take the COVID-19 vaccination when it becomes available to them. Since that time, ANA has been delighted to see the welcome images and stories shared of nurses stepping up to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and prepare themselves to vaccinate the general public when the time comes. In one of our favorite postings on social media, Reuters tweets a video of a nurse in New York receiving their second dose, on January 4. And here is ANA chief nursing officer Debbie Hatmaker cheering on nurse volunteers to go out and get the shots in the arms of the first tiers of vaccine recipients.

More recently, ANA, AHA and AMA released a public service announcement (PSA) calling for the American public to get the COVID-19 vaccination when it is their turn. The PSA emphasizes that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and will help us all as we work together to defeat COVID-19. 

Many people, including some nurses and other health care providers, are skeptical about taking the vaccine. Some are distrustful of the speed with which the vaccine came to market. Others, including many individuals from Black American, Latinx and other communities of color, legitimately distrust a healthcare system that has a history of discrimination, abuse, and neglect. This history not only points back to unethical and inhumane scientific experimentation such as the Tuskegee project, but is manifest in persistent disparities and systemic injustices in health care access and outcomes, even to this day in the COVID-19 pandemic. ANA along with the American Academy of Nursing has called for broad-based social action to address injustice and racial inequities in health care. Disparities must be addressed if the project to vaccinate the nation is to be successful.

In an effort to lead by example and show certainty of the science in the safe outcomes of COVID-19 vaccines, ANA President Dr. Ernest Grant participated in the Moderna vaccine trial. “It afforded me the opportunity to stand in solidarity with nurses on the frontline, battling the COVID-19 pandemic all across the U.S. Secondly, I recognized the urgent need for Black Americans to participate in vaccine clinical trials,” said Dr. Grant. The trial was unblinded earlier this year and Dr. Grant learned that he did receive the vaccine, as opposed to the placebo. He has elected to remain in the study for the full two years, as Moderna continues to gather data on the effects of the vaccine.

ANA leaders are confident in the capacity of the nursing profession to meet this moment. This confidence comes from knowing that nursing remains the most trusted profession, and that nurses hold themselves to high ethical and practice standards. Following these standards in the broadest sense means that a nurse will have an informed, considered approach to receiving and administering the COVID-19 vaccine. A nurse must consider their duties to optimize patient outcomes and promote the common good, along with the responsibility to safeguard their own well-being. In any situation, there is an ethical obligation to seek and obtain education and information, as well as advocate for answers when there are questions. Nurse leaders have a duty to provide nurses with accurate and accessible information so that individual nurses can make an informed decision for themselves and in turn assist in counseling their patients. 

In a survey of 13,000 nurses conducted last October, four out of ten nurses indicated a need for more information about the COVID-19 vaccine as a major reason for their skepticism at that time.  To meet that need, ANA set about to educate nurses and equip them with the tools they need to make decisions for themselves and for their patients. One key component is a set of Guiding Principles for Nurses, organized around themes of Access, Transparency, Equity, Efficacy, and Safety, approved by the ANA Board of Directors in 2020.

ANA continues to work to gather the most credible, evidence-based information about the vaccines, and share that information widely with members, nursing communities, partners in health, and policymakers.

Nurse-focused materials available now include:

• FAQs created jointly by ANA and the pharmacist group ASHP, written with the clinician in mind.
• A webinar and short-form videos featuring perspectives from a public health nurse and presenting the facts about COVID-19 vaccine development and distribution

ANA’s dedicated vaccine webpage also offers links to relevant information from partners such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  ANA is using its other distribution channels to share information helpful to nurses in the vaccination effort, such as the Vaccine Handling Toolkit recently released by ANA’s partner US Pharmacopeia. The toolkit informs operational issues on preparation and labeling, storage and transport, and waste and disposal of COVID-19 vaccine material.

Providing vaccine education and resources aligns with ANA’s commitment to immunization as a critical component of public health. In addition to providing information directly to nurses, ANA has advocated for public policies to address specific aspects of the vaccine roll-out that are important for nurses and their patients. In a letter to the transition team for the new Biden administration, ANA emphasized that nurses are central to vaccination efforts and their voices should be considered in distribution planning. ANA also called for federal resources to support mass distribution and administration. Advocacy on vaccines goes hand in hand with continued advocacy for policies to expand access to protective equipment and provide economic relief as strategies that are also key to slowing the spread of COVID-19.

For more information about ANA advocacy on issues that are important to nurses, visit RNAction.org.