i already did Part A which was “Develop an advocacy email to send to one of your federal legislators to ask them to co-sponsor a bill in progress. First go to Congress.gov, the congressional website, and use “nurse” or “nurse practitioner in the search bar to find relevant bills.
Note the sponsor(s) and co-sponsors for the bills that interest you. Next go to House.gov to find your U.S. Representative and Senate.gov to find your U.S. Senators. Develop an email to send to each of them (if one or all are already co-sponsors, select a
different bill). Personalize the email and be sure to identify factual reasons for the policymaker to support the bill.”
You will do Part B
Part B: Following submission of your emails, complete the written portion of the assignment using APA 7th formatting in approximately 350-500 words. 1) Include the rationale for why you selected this activity 2) why you support this specific bill (provide citations
to support your facts), 3) why you think sending the advocacy email was or was not effective, and 4) the learnings you gained from the activity and 5) how you will use those learnings to inform health policy work in your role after graduation.
Please use peer reviewed articles from nursing sources no older then 2020 to give the factual citations to support the facts stated in my Part A email. Please make sure you address all 5 questions/topics.
About me: I am currently a registered nurse in the intensive care unit. Upon completion of these courses I will earn my Masters Degree in Nursing Education. When answering questions please focus on implementing my idea etc as an EDUCATOR in nursing either to future nurses, new nurses, student nurses, or current nurses.
Here is the name of the bill and my Email I drafted for your reference : Bill: H.R.2530 – Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act of 2023
Sponsor: Representative Janice D Schakowsky
US Representative: Joe Courtney
State Representative (CT): Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy
Dear Joe Courtney, Richard Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy,
My name is Salvatrice Tinsley and I am an Intensive Care Unit Registered Nurse working in Farmington, CT. I am writing you today on behalf of Connecticut Registered Nurses and our patients, to ask that you help us by taking a stand against unsafe nurse staffing ratios. Staffing ratios directly impact the safety of patients admitted to the hospital. Your sponsorship and support for bill H.R.2530, which aims to improve the nurse-to-patient ratio, is crucial for enhancing patient safety.
Over the past 8 years, I have personally witnessed the toll of increasing nurse burnout and a high turnover rate among first-year registered nurses. The workload demanded on nurses during a 12-hour shift is not just unreasonable, it’s unsustainable. It not only affects the nurse’s well-being but also the safety of the patients. Quality of care decreases when nurses are overworked, and unable to accomplish tasks due to being inundated by having too many patients on their assignment for their shift. These are only a few reasons I see new graduate nurses only working bedside for one year and transitioning out of acute care. Registered Nurses are overworked. Correcting the nurse-to-patient ratio would increase the retention of nurses in acute care.
Working in the intensive care unit, I care for severely ill patients, some of who are so critical they may not make it to the next shift without timely care. They require medication administrations with critical adjustments, and their nurse must be at their bedside for several minutes, if not hours, at a time. A person cannot be in two places at once, so if this nurse’s other patients are trying to get out of bed unassisted or are also due for a time-sensitive medication, the nurse must rely on his or her overworked coworkers for assistance. This only causes a more significant strain on the department and employees.
Recently, a patient who was status post a cardiac procedure was trying to get out of her recliner and fell. She had used her call bell button to call for help, but because the nurses and aides were attending to other patients and taking too long, she decided to try and get up on her own. Due to weakness, this resulted in her falling, hitting her head, and, unfortunately, creating a significant brain bleed that ultimately killed her. Her nurse was only one room over but with another critical patient, making it impossible for her to get to her patient in time. If staffing ratios were better, then another nurse would have been available to assist and this patient would not have died.
Nurses should not be overworked and unable to provide the care their patients need. Our priority is keeping our patients safe at all times, and we cannot achieve that without support
through policy designed to maintain safety in the number of patients each nurse provides care for We need you to help us. I hope you will join me and my fellow registered nurses by sponsoring H.R. 2530 and supporting nurse staffing ratios to make patient safety a priority again.
Respectfully yours