2002 AJN Table of Contents
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Washington Watch
American Journal of Nursing -
September, 2002 - Volume 102, Issue 9
Individuals, organizations, and associations that successfully advocate their causes before lawmakers all have one important thing in common: political power. As members of Congress and the administration continue to debate issues such as health care reform, patients’ rights, and access to care, turning on your political power as a nurse has never been more important. It is critical that nurses speak up about quality patient care, adequate staffing, safe workplaces, and the multitude of challenges they and their colleagues face every day. Who better to advocate measures that ensure the safety and quality of health care before Congress than those who are on the front lines?
While the ANA has lobbyists who represent nursing’s concerns on Capitol Hill, at the heart of the ANA’s political power are its members—registered nurses across the country who support nursing’s legislative agenda through grassroots action, lobbying, and contributions to the ANA Political Action Committee (ANA–PAC). In the past several years, this partnership between the ANA and politically active RNs has led to many legislative victories, including passage of the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act in 2000 and, this summer, the Nurse Reinvestment Act.
“Nurses’ letters and phone calls to members of Congress truly make the difference,” said Erin McKeon, an ANA lobbyist. “Nothing makes my job easier than when I walk into a member’s office to talk about an issue, and the member of Congress or staff person tells me that they have already received 10 letters about it from the nurses in their district.”
The ANA is now using the Internet to make it even easier for nurses’ voices to be heard
in Congress. By visiting the ANA’s new Political PowerWeb page at NursingWorld.org (www.NursingWorld.org/gova/politicalpower), nurses can keep up with the ANA’s high-priority federal legislative issues, learn how their Congressional representatives voted on recent legislation, write to and e-mail members of Congress directly, and more—all by a click of a mouse.
Not sure who represents you in Congress? Through the Political Power Web page, users can identify their members of Congress and gain access to their contact information, the committees on which they serve, the names of their key staff members, the bills they have sponsored, and links to their Web sites.
Are you a member of an ANA constituent member association (CMA) interested in supporting pro-nursing candidates for federal office? CMA members can now make secure online contributions to the ANA–PAC on the Political Power Web page.
Need to know more about federal legislation affecting nurses and patients? The Political Power site will enable you to look up a bill number and text, learn the bill’s status and the ANA’s position on it, and identify the cosponsors of the legislation. Once you’ve learned about the issues under consideration, you can contact your Congressional representatives to express your support or opposition. The Political Power site can help with that, too, by allowing you to e-mail a prewritten or personalized letter directly to your members of Congress.
“The Political Power site makes it simple to stay informed about the issues at stake for nurses,” said Fran Beall, RN, CS, ANP, a member of both the Georgia State Nurses Association and the ANA–PAC board. “And the best part is that it takes just a few minutes to go from learning about proposals that will affect the lives of nurses, to helping to shape them.”
The Political Power site is one more way that the ANA is using technology to improve the lives of nurses in the workplace. If the ANA is to effect change on issues such as nurse staffing and shortages, ergonomics, mandatory overtime, and barriers to practice for APRNs, then intensive, ongoing grassroots activities are vital. Log on to the Political Power site and be heard on the issues that matter to you!
Michelle Artz is a senior political action specialist at the ANA.
The ANA launches a new Web page that links nurses to Congress.
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