By Jennifer Larson, contributor
Nov. 20, 2009 - Did you ever wonder who’s standing up for nurses in our nation’s capitol?
That task rests in the capable hands of three nurses who currently serve as lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives: Lois Capps of California, Carolyn McCarthy of New York and Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas.
All three Congresswomen have decades of nursing experience under their collective belts, and regularly cite that experience as having a definite impact on their work as lawmakers.
For Johnson, her background as a psychiatric nurse has given her great insight in how to work with other people, a crucial requirement for a legislator.
“It helped in terms of knowledge about health care, and also it helped me understand behavior,” she said. “People are the same, and you learn to work with certain personalities.”
McCarthy notes that she, too, often approaches the way she works as if she was still working as a nurse. Nurses learn to show up early, to be prepared, and to follow through, and that’s what McCarthy does when working with colleagues to get legislation passed.
“Working in Congress is like working in the intensive care unit,” she said. “It’s chaos, but it’s controlled chaos.”
A few years after she was elected to Congress in 1998, Capps founded the House Nursing Caucus in 2003. The caucus, which now has well over 100 members, was designed to educate other members of Congress about issues that are important to nurses and the impact that nurses have on a variety of other matters of public concern.
All three of the Congresswomen credit their nursing experiences as giving them a great depth of knowledge about health care that often drives their legislative agendas. They’ve seen, firsthand, what nurses do and why they are so crucial, and that often shows up in the bills that they write or champion.
Building on their backgrounds, they are proud to have supported legislation that supports the nursing profession. Each has thrown her weight behind legislation that supports current and future nurses, including legislation that would boost funding and assistance to train more nurse faculty members who could, in turn, educate more of the nation’s future nursing workforce.
It’s been a very high priority for Capps.
“I have been working for years to recruit, train and retain more nurses, passing the Nursing Reinvestment Act in 2002 and also working to secure additional federal funding assistance for nurse education,” she said. Capps also worked to ensure that $100 million of the funding in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which passed earlier this year, was designated for nursing education.
Among other issues, McCarthy said she is proud of the legislation that she introduced earlier this year that would improve the ratio of school nurses to students and help to relieve the chronic shortage of school nurses in the United States. She also sponsored the Nurse Training and Retention Act of 2009, which was introduced this past summer.
According to Johnson, this type of legislation is crucial because nurses play such a critical role in the health care system.
“There is no good substitute for a professional nurse,” Johnson said.
Capps agreed. “Our country is facing a shortage of health care professionals, particularly nurses, which will only grow worse in the coming years if we don’t act to address this problem,” she said. “As America’s population ages and we work to expand access to health care to more Americans, we have to have enough highly trained health care professionals to meet this growing demand for care.”
Lately, these nurse-legislators have been very involved in shaping the health care reform legislation that has garnered so much attention in recent months. The legislation, known as the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962), contains several provisions that are the result of their efforts. For example, the bill contains an initiative that would support nurse-managed health clinics in medically undeserved areas, and it also expands nursing education grant programs under Title VIII. Additionally, the nurse lawmakers have voiced their support for higher quality health care and expanded access.
The House recently passed the health care bill and forwarded it to the U.S. Senate, who is still working out the details of their own version.
“This is a historic moment for our country,” said Capps, who said she felt “pride and joy” in seeing the reform legislation move forward. “I am thrilled that with this vote, we are closer than ever to delivering affordable, quality health care for all Americans.”
McCarthy noted that no one knows for sure what will happen to the legislation now. It may not be perfect—“No bill is perfect,” she said, which Capps agreed with—but she has high hopes that there will be some action before the end of the year. Change is definitely needed, she said, noting for example that people should be able to get health insurance without worrying that an insurance company will deny coverage because of a pre-existing condition.
“This is the right time and the right opportunity to get something done,” she said.
If the legislation is enacted and access to care is expanded as the legislators hope, Capps said she expects that even more nurses will be needed to deliver health care.
“That’s why our efforts to recruit, train and retain nurses are critical,” she added. “I look forward to continuing to work with the nursing community to reform our health care system.”
For more information about these nurses on Capitol Hill, visit their web sites:
Lois Capps
Eddie Bernice Johnson
Carolyn McCarthy
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