Advocating For Our Patients

Here is my weekly blog post for BFA. I am heading to Washington DC on Monday to lobby for an Office of the National Nurse. To follow my trip, go to www.nationalnurse.info and please sign our petition too. --Teri

In three days, a team of nurses will embark on Washington D.C. to lobby Congress to sponsor legislation for an Office of the National Nurse. The crux of this Office will be to establish a National Nurse Corps whose main responsibility is to design and conduct community outreach activities that best meet the needs of their citizens. By educating the public regarding healthy life-style practices and ways to prevent disease, the Nurse Corps will ultimately reduce suffering, save lives and be cost-effective.

The Corps will also promote and support legislation to improve the health of every single American. Nurses know from their formal education that we must stand up and advocate for those who are committed to their care. Nurses must take a lesson from Martin Luther King and Howard Dean, and not remain silent. We must continue to speak out on issues that impact our patients and their health. The Florence Nightingale Pledge states, "With loyalty, we are devoted to all those who are committed to our care."

Nurses are all too familiar with the ongoing Code Purple condition of the United States' health care system. Being on the front lines working directly with patients and their families, we see many preventable situations. One travesty that occurred just eighteen months ago involved 37-year-old Douglas Schmidt who died in a Portland, Oregon hospital. He was among thousands of Oregonians who lost state-paid coverage for their prescription medications. The anti-convulsant medication Schmidt was taking cost the state $13 each day. Schmidt could no longer afford to buy his meds, and when he discontinued the drug, he had a seizure, became comatose and eventually slipped away to a slow and lingering death. The cost of his hospitalization totaled nearly a million dollars.

One month ago, a nursing student came to me in tears. The patient she was taking care of could no longer afford their blood pressure medications and ended up having a stroke, eventually dying.

The prescription drug program, which was designed to help prevent horrific situations like the two above, goes into effect January 1st. Unfortunately, there are two problems with it that even President Bush is aware of. The first Bush mentioned in a speech he gave to 300-400 invited Minnesotans, telling them that persuading Americans to sign up for a new program would be difficult. The second issue is the huge gap of prescription drug coverage where no benefit is allowed between $2,250 and $5,100 of drug expenses.

Americans deserve better. We need a National Nurse to make sure we are advocating for a solution that works for all of us and that finally fixes this problem.

—Teri Mills, RN, MS, ANP
Democracy for Oregon