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The American Nurses Association's national campaign linking deteriorating quality of care with the loss of registered nurses has sent public support rocketing, Joan Meehan reports
THE PROSPECT of comprehensive reform of the US healthcare system brought hope to healthcare staff and patients in 1993-1994. But behind the scenes a more worrying scenario was developing. The growth of `managed care', a series of initiatives to control spending and target service delivery, propelled the hospital industry into massive restructuring. To cut costs, hospitals targeted registered nurses for redundancies, often replacing them with cheaper, unlicensed aides. The American Nurses Association (ANA) received reports from around the country that aides were performing nursing duties such as starting IVs, providing wound care and inserting catheters.
Yet users of the healthcare system were unaware of these changes or how they could negatively affect their care.
The healthcare reform efforts were eventually defeated and the ANA turned its attention to the impact of managed care on nurs ing practice. It collected primary and secondary research to assess the situation and to establish evidence for a national public education campaign.
The campaign, called Every Patient Deserves a Nurse, aimed to educate nurses, users of the healthcare system, policy makers, and hospital administrators about the reduction in registered nurse staffing and the dangers this posed to safety and quality of patient care. This campaign was part of a larger quality and safety initiative launched to produce hard evidence that nurses make a difference - to the safety and quality of patient care as well as to the cost
Beginning in mid-1994, the ANA launched a campaign which targeted a variety of audiences through the use of printed materials, events, media coverage, public testimony and promotional materials. A...