NURSES ENCOURAGED TO TAKE LEADING ROLE IN U.S. HEALTH CARE

Nurses should take a leading role in improving the nation's health care system, a nurse-educator said at a state convention of the Missouri Nurses Association in Cape Girardeau Monday.

"We have a mission of caring and that elevates us," said Beverly L. Malone, dean and professor at the North Carolina A&T State University School of Nursing in Greensboro.

About 150 registered nurses are attending the three-day convention at the Holiday Inn. The convention ends Wednesday.

Founded in 1906, Missouri Nurses Association represents 37,000 practicing registered nurses through its 20 district associations.

Malone was the keynote speaker. Also Monday, the association presented two Missouri hospitals, St. Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau and Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Crystal City, with the Magnet Award for Excellence in Nursing. Southeast Missouri Hospital of Cape Girardeau was a previous winner of the award.

The award recognizes those health care agencies in the state that use management practices that help attract and retain registered professional nurses.

Nursing, Malone said, is an around-the-clock profession that should take a leading role in shaping the future of health care in the nation.

There are 2 million nurses in the nation and one out of every 40 voters is a nurse, she said.

Infant mortality is ravaging the nation's minority population and other health care concerns "reach all the way into the middle class," she said.

Nationwide, 67 million Americans are uninsured or under-insured in terms of health care coverage, she said.

Malone said it takes "power" to care and nurses have a variety of power at their disposal, from informational power to charisma.

Nurses, she said, should share information on better ways of delivering health care.

She said nurses should display a visible passion of caring. "It is the joy of what we do, that's all charisma is."

All too often, she said, nurses display unhappiness. "We project the misery of it (health care)," said Malone.

"We organize everything else in nursing; couldn't we organize our depression?" she asked jokingly as the crowd responded with laughter.

Nurses, she said, don't always do a good job of informing others about their profession. "Nurses, we do such a wonderful job. Our PR, though, is very poor."

Malone said the nation's nurses need to take an active role in their professional organizations.

Many in the profession think of nursing as "work and work" followed ultimately by "exhaustion," she said.

Malone said that situation has to change. "You can't tell me you can give excellent care when you are exhausted."

Added Malone, "It's going to take a clear mind for us to move health care forward."

She told convention participants that "practice is at the center of everything we do" and consultation with patients is a universal characteristic of nursing.

Caring, she said, is at the heart of nursing and efforts to reshape the health care profession.