With the loss of physicians and other pressures placed on the medical profession because of healthcare reform, nurses are once again pressuring to gain more responsibility and independence in providing health care. According to a U.S. Institute of Medicine report, nurses can handle much of the strain that healthcare reform will place on doctors and should be given both the education and the authority to take on more medical duties.
The U.S. healthcare reform law passed in March is expected to add 32 million Americans to health insurance company rolls. Several groups, including the Institute of Medicine, have forecast shortages of doctors to provide care.
“We cannot get significant improvements in the quality of health care or coverage unless nurses are front and center in the health care system — in leadership, in education and training, and in the design of the new health care system,” said Donna Shalala, a former Health and Human Services secretary and chair of the IOM’s committee on the future of nursing. “We can’t be fighting with each other if we really are going to have a high quality system that we can afford.”
“We are re-creating nursing in America,” Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said at a news conference.
The foundation, which promotes healthcare reform and funds research on the issue, worked with the Institute of Medicine on the report.
Shifting more responsibility to nurses to take up the slack for the loss of physicians could be one way to save on the cost of healthcare in America.
