and here it is!
Leah,
I'm responding to your email regarding the Campaign for Nursing's
Future, and the commercials that go along with the campaign. We're so
sorry that you find the commercials dismaying.
In fact, during the course of the past year and a half, we have learned
many things about the nursing profession, including the deplorable
working conditions that some nurses face. However, it is a fact that
recruiting MORE people into nursing will help these conditions, as just
the addition of people will address the workload problem,
which was the number of patients assigned to each nurse. If there were,
say, 100,000 more nurses right now, all of them would have a smaller
patient load and be able to provide the best care possible. Many of the hospital administrators we've talked to are eager to hire qualified nurses, and are truly feeling the effects of the nursing shortage.
That said, we know that this is not the only way to solve the problem.
Part of our campaign is also dedicated to addressing these issues,
and we also have a retention component which deals with keeping good
nurses and helping them solve their problems. We frequently read the
message boards allnurses.com, and have close contact with
NurseWeek, Nursing Spectrum, and the other major publications, so we are aware of the major concerns.
Please believe that we were in no way trying to be deceptive in our ads.
We have met many, many nurses who love their jobs, are honored to be in
the profession, and are doing a great job every day. We only hope we
can encourage more people to get into these situations.
Thanks again for writing. We do appreciate your concern.
Take care
Lori