In North Carolina, there are nearly 4,500 nurse practitioners, who are increasingly on the front lines of the American health care system. They can write prescriptions and make diagnoses under the supervision of doctors. Most are nurses who have earned a master's degree to increase their training in direct patient care. But starting in the fall, those seeking to be advanced nurses will have the option - and eventually, the requirement - to gain more education. Last month, the UNC system's Board of Governors approved the Doctor of Nursing Practice, or DNP degree, for six public campuses: East Carolina, UNC-CH, UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Greensboro, Winston-Salem State University and Western Carolina University. Two private universities, Duke and Gardner-Webb, already offer the more advanced degree.
A bill that would require Minnesota hospitals to meet national standards on nurse staffing appears headed for a roadblock in the Legislature. The chair of the House Health and Human Services Policy Committee says she doesn't intend to hold a hearing on the bill unless the Minnesota Nurses Association and the hospitals start getting closer to a compromise on the issue. The union is lobbying hard for the legislation because it says nurse staffing levels in some hospitals are too low and could put patients in danger.
Democrats in the Michigan Legislature and a nurses? union are calling for a state law that would require hospitals to maintain staff levels without resorting to mandatory overtime. Sixteen states currently have rules regarding staff-to-patient ratios. Right now, California is the only state with a law that sets minimum staffing levels in hospitals. State Representative Jon Switalski (D-Warren) is about to introduce legislation to set staffing requirements in emergency rooms and other hospital wards.
Christy Blanco, a nurse practitioner, is caught in the middle of a tug-of-war between doctors and nurses over who will provide basic primary care for the 30 million U.S. citizens expected to get health insurance under the 2010 health-care law. Nurse practitioners say they can do their jobs just fine without doctors and they're lobbying lawmakers to end restrictions in more than a dozen of the 34 states that require physician oversight. Despite the need for increased care, doctors are pushing back, fighting for restrictions with their own lobbying efforts as well as with lawsuits across the country, arguing that patients' basic care is at risk.
More than 27 million Americans will soon gain health coverage under the health law. But who will treat them all? With such a large coverage expansion, and with an anticipated shortage of primary care physicians available to serve them, some states have or are considering allowing so-called advanced practice nurses—those with advanced degrees—to treat more patients.
An African-American nurse who is suing a Flint hospital because she said it agreed to a man's request that no African-American nurses care for his newborn recalled Monday that she was stunned by her employer's actions. "I didn't even know how to react," said Tonya Battle, 49, a veteran of the neonatal intensive care unit and a nearly 25-year employee of the Hurley Medical Center. Battle's lawsuit states a note was posted on the assignment clipboard reading "No African American nurse to take care of baby," according to the eight-page complaint against the medical center.