2024 AONL Advocacy Day
Posted 3 months ago by Kim Pilote
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My Advocacy Day Experience on Capitol Hill
Laurie Laurino MSN, RN, CPAN
Shortly after the New Year, I learned I was selected as one of the recipients to represent the American Society of Perianesthesia Nurses (ASPAN) at the American Organization for Nursing Leadership’s (AONL) Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C. this summer. AONL serves as the national professional organization of nurse leaders and represents the voice of nursing leadership (AHA, 2024). I was honored to be chosen to represent the perianesthesia community and privileged that my knowledge will be enhanced learning about the federal and state lawmaking processes related to healthcare.
This unique event of meeting nursing leaders from across the U.S., afforded me the opportunity to network with colleagues by enhancing my knowledge of healthcare issues encountered in hospital systems within our home state of Florida and learn the challenges faced within all of our institutions, and the proposed healthcare legislation brought forward through AONL that our leadership group would present to the state legislators for their awareness and support.
The day started with meeting nurse leader colleagues from various regions throughout Florida. We were introduced to our AONL hosts and provided instruction on the agenda, briefing information on the three proposed Health Care Acts, known as “Congressional Asks” through AONL, and a general orientation of the sponsored legislation, grassroots training and role play, congressional meeting logistics/mobile tool review and how to convey the importance of these when meeting with representatives. We were provided time to practice within our group, where we discussed the best way to present these, then divided the parts of each Act we would introduce to the representatives we had appointments with.
The three AONL Congressional Asks included:
- Support the Safety from Violence for Healthcare Employees (SAVE) Act (S.2768/H.R. 2584):
Enacts federal protection for health care workers against workplace violence and intimidation
like those that exist for flight crews, flight attendants and airport workers.
- Support the Future Advancement of Academic Nursing (FAAN) Act (S.3770/H.R. 7266):
Addresses the primary barriers contributing to nursing workforce shortages by increasing the
number of faculty and clinical placement sites; provides resources to hire and retain faculty and enroll and retain nursing students; modernizes nursing curriculum, technology and simulation labs to reflect modern health care challenges and solutions.
- Oppose Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act (S.1113/H.R. 2530):
Requires hospitals to implement and submit to HHS a staffing plan that complies with specified nurse-to-patient ratios by unit. Additionally, this bill would not increase the number of nurses, but limit hospitals and health care organizations ability to hire support staff to help the current staff; thus increasing the amount of time nurses spend on administrative paperwork, dietary and other non-patient care tasks that contribute to clinician burnout (AONL, 2024).
The experience of discussing these Healthcare Acts was quite daunting at first. As luck would have it, we only met with one representative during the day, as it was a busy day at the “Hill” with senate votes and the Attorney General was present testifying in chamber. We mostly met with the congressional aides who were quite up to date on issues, and were very patient, as we presented the above “asks” and answered all of the questions brought forth. At the end of each session, our group debriefed in the hall, before we entered the next representative office.
This was definitely a “bucket list” item for me and one I would wholeheartedly recommend to my perianesthesia colleagues. I have kept in touch with my new found colleagues from this experience, as well as the activity of these proposed healthcare acts. This experience allowed me to see the importance of why we need to be advocates, not only for our patients, but for the health care issues that affect our environment, our practice and the future of health care in this country.
References:
American Hospital Association (2024). Retrieved from https://www.aha.org
American Organization for Nursing Leadership (2023). Retrieved from www.aonl.org