Legislative

ANSR Alliance Releases Consensus Document

At a May reception for members of Congress and their legislative assistants, the ANSR (Americans for Nursing Shortage Relief) Alliance released its Consensus Document entitled, Assuring Quality Health Care for the United States: Building and Sustaining an Infrastructure of Qualified Nurses for the Nation.

ENA is a founding member of the Alliance, co-facilitates the organization, and was a key player in the development of the Consensus Document.

The ANSR Alliance is the largest collaborative effort among nursing associations working to pass legislation to stem the nursing shortage. Forty-eight national nursing organizations support its legislative platform. The Alliance believes Congress must enact and fund a comprehensive set of initiatives to ensure that the nation has an adequate infrastructure of well-qualified nurses.

The Consensus Document outlines programs and evidence-based, cost-effective best practices across the federal agencies that ANSR believes hold the most promise for the federal government to adequately address and mitigate the complex factors contributing to the current and expected nurse and nurse faculty shortages. These best practices will help establish a foundation of available nurses to respond to public health emergencies and provide quality acute and long-term care to patients in need.

To meet the basic nurse workforce demands, ANSR recommends that Congress:

  • Build capacity of nursing education programs and enhance nursing research;
  • Strengthen the capacity of the national nursing public health infrastructure;
  • Help retain nurses, with special emphasis on the older nurse; and
  • Expand recruitment of new nurses with emphasis on those with diverse backgrounds.

The document discusses these four policy areas and proposed strategies. In addition, ANSR identifies the one critical action needed to mitigate the immediate effect of the nursing shortage and to address all of these policy areas: at least $200 million in funding for the Title VIII – Nursing Workforce Development Programs in FY 2008.

Source: Washington Update - 3- June 30, 2007