Nurses are Experts. Don't Overlook Them.

Nurse leaders share their expertise on everything from advocacy to the nursing shortage to things a new CNO should know.

Not much has changed in 20 years when it comes to nurses being interviewed by the news media as expert sources.

According to a replication of the original "Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media," nurses are only used as sources in 2% of health news coverage (in 1997 it was less than 1%) and are only mentioned in 13% of health news coverage overall.

Yet there are nearly 3.4 million registered nurses in the United States according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. So why do journalists overlook such a plentiful, and expert, resource? According to the study, journalists do not understand the range of nurses' roles and often put "rock-star doctors" at the top of their source lists.

Here are five expert nurses who share their wisdom, knowledge, and vision for the nursing profession with HealthLeaders, and they remind us that nurses' expertise is important and needs to be heard.

1. The Interview: American Nurses Association President Pamela F. Cipriano
 

Pamela F. Cipriano, current ANA president, has held positions spanning the bedside, the boardroom, and beyond, working as a healthcare consultant, a nursing faculty member, a chief nursing officer, and a chief clinical officer.

Nurses bring more to the table than clinical skills, says Cipriano—their knowledge and experiences put them in prime positions to advocate for both patients and the profession.

"I think the message is nurses are really your secret weapon—whether it's in the home, whether it's in the community, whether it's in the hospital—and we are underutilizing their expertise. It's important to recognize this from a patient outcome [standpoint and an economic one]," Cipriano says.

"The care that nurses provide is both what is obvious and a whole lot more that is not apparent," she says.

2. A Q&A With the First Man Elected as American Nurses Association President
 

In January 2019, Ernest Grant, PhD, RN, FAAN, will take the reins from current President Pamela F. Cipriano and become the first man to be president of the ANA. The bulk of Grant's career has been spent at the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center at UNC Health in Chapel Hill, where he oversees the center's nationally renowned Burn Prevention Program.

"I still want to see [the ANA] move forward. My top priorities are to advance the nursing profession in healthcare through fostering higher standards. [I want to encourage nurses to] advocate for issues that impact nursing in public health by being involved at the legislative level, both state and national level. That means actively volunteering to serve on committees: maybe for someone's campaign or serving as experts for a legislator on a healthcare-related issue, and understanding how decisions made in Washington or in state capitals may affect the profession itself. And then, of course, getting young nurses to be more involved within nursing and the ANA as well. They are the future of nursing," says Grant.

3. Former HHS Adviser Lauren Underwood Running for House Seat
 

With years of experience as a registered nurse and a former senior adviser to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Barack Obama, Lauren Underwood, RN, is seeking to unseat Rep. Randy Hultgren in Illinois' 14th congressional district in the November election.

"I'm a registered nurse, and my career is at the intersection of clinical and policymaking, working to help transform our healthcare system. We know there are real challenges, the ACA created some and helped some, but we will need to have another serious effort around health reform. It is critical to have the voice of patients and providers at this table. And I am excited to partner [with] providers, plans, patients, and even hospital CFOs in order to get this done," Underwood says.

"I think that we need to have these critical voices at the table because healthcare is not theoretical. So many people who have had the pen for too long see healthcare through a theoretical lens, and as a result, we have a system that is broken and fragmented and inefficient, and it's time we fix that," she says.

4. 5 Things You Should Know About the Nursing Shortage
 

Heidi Sanborn, DNP, RN, CNE, clinical assistant professor and interim director of the RN-BSN, and concurrent enrollment program in the College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University in Phoenix, has an eye for the finer points of the nursing shortage and the complexities of nurse supply and demand.

"The shortage will not hit all areas the same. In some states, it is very regional, and some states are projected to have worse shortages than others. Some states are predicted to have a glut of nurses so there will be no shortages there at all. [Based on] the latest data, the big predictions for the shortage in the next 10 years are California, Texas, surprisingly New Jersey, and South Carolina. They are really the top at the moment for predicted shortages. We are still bracing for shortages here in Arizona, but we are now hearing that it may not be as bad as we thought it was originally predicted to be," Sanborn says.

5. 5 Strategies New CNOs Should Know
 

"Better is better than perfect," is a guiding principle for Erin LaCross, DNP, RN, CMSRN, CENP, CNO at Parkview Regional Medical Center and Affiliates in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

"It's about having a mindset of continuous improvement," she says. "It just puts you in the frame of mind of always looking at being better than you are today, … and always learning and always forgiving yourself. If you did something today that you don't want to do again, then don't do it again. But you've reconciled that with yourself, and you don't have to be stressed about it."

This philosophy can help everyone from bedside nurses to CNOs learn and move forward.

"I think where we can get hung up is we want things to be perfect before we implement any changes," LaCross observes. "And then, in the meantime, while we're waiting for perfection, how many patients could have had better care?"

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the number of registered nurses there are in the United States. There are about 3.4 million, not billion.