NURSES Rights

[-jt]

For posting at work:

The American Nurses Association's

~ BILL OF RIGHTS for REGISTERED NURSES ~

Registered Nurses promote and restore health, prevent illness, and protect the people entrusted to their care. They work to alleviate the suffering experienced by individuals, families, groups, and communities. In so doing, nurses provide services that maintain respect for human dignity and embrace the uniqueness of each patient and the nature of his or her health problems, without restriction with regard to social or economic status.

To maximize the contributions nurses make to society, it is necessary to protect the dignity and autonomy of nurses in the workplace. To that end, the following rights must be afforded:

I. Nurses have the Right to practice in a manner that fulfills their obligations to society and to those who receive nursing care.

II. Nurses have the Right to practice in environments that allow them to act in accordance with professional standards and legally authorized scopes of practice.

III. Nurses have the Right to a work environment that supports and facilitates ethical practice, in accordance with the Code for Nurses and its interpretive statements.

IV. Nurses have the Right to freely and openly advocate for themselves and their patients, without fear of retribution.

V. Nurses have the Right to fair compensation for their work, consistent with their knowledge, experience, and professional responsibilities.

VI. Nurses have the Right to a work environment that is safe for themselves and their patients.

VII. Nurses have the Right to negotiate the conditions of their employment, either as individuals or collectively, in all practice settings.

adopted by the ANA Board of Directors June 26, 2001.

[-jt]

they have the avenue to do that. It already exists. They just have to get involved & make it happen.

http://www.NFLPN.org

[Jenny P]

Ktwlpn, one of my major headaches as an RN is the enormous amount of documentation and teaching we are supposed to do. I feel that LPNs have most of the technical skills necessary in nursing. It's that D*** planning and implementation of care plans, evaluating and then re-assessing the outcomes, making assessments and using the nursing theory and process to develop a plan that the patient, his family, and his health care provider will all be happy with. Doing chart audits for a JCAHO visit etc. Yes, both LPNs and RNs are supposed to be advocates for the patient. Yes, both LPNs and RNs are leaving nursing due to poor staffing and unsafe nurse patient ratios. But our issues are different. And our scopes of practice are also totally different. Please call your State Board of Nursing and ask for a copy and then read it,

[ktwlpn, LPN]

planning and implementation of care plans, evaluating and then re-assessing the outcomes, making assessments and using the nursing theory and process to develop a plan that the patient, his family, and his health care provider will all be happy with. Doing chart audits for a JCAHCO visit....Tell me if I'm wrong, but I hear resentment towards the RNs role and the lack of a consistant LPN role.>>>>>>>>>>>>>I have a problem with the lack of consistency from state to state and facility to facility...however I do realize that the responsibility for this does not lie with the RN's I work beside..I am very familiar with my states scope of practice-at various times in my nursing career I have been responsible for assessments(yes-co-signed by an RN-who worked beside me and trusted my assessment skills)...generating care plans using nursing theory and process,educating pts and their families,I work closely with my pts families on the Altzheimers unit I am in charge of now-a great deal of care plannig and education of families gets done...We have a medical secretary responsible for chart auditing...I understand that a great many RN's do not like the idea of "being responsible for an LPN-we could work together to change this... we can work together on defining the role of the LPN---

[Jenny P]

Ktwlpn, you, as an LPN, do not want me or any other RN defining your role as an LPN-- just as I, as an RN, do not want any MD (or administrator!) defining my RN role. Yes, we, as NURSES, could and should work TOGETHER to make nursing a more powerful profession that is respected. HOWEVER, each of us need to define what our roles in nursing are before we can work together to strengthen nursing. At the RN level, there is a model where several specialty groups which function like "sister organizations": ANA is affiliated with 13 other nursing specialty organizations which all function independently, but when it comes to some important issues (like the needle stick legislation), they all speak together. I could see ANA and the NFLPN functioning that way: each serving their own members, but uniting nationally to speak together as one nursing voice.

This will not happen unless there are more members of NFLPN who believe in such a radical idea. ANA has changed from (what so many perceived it to be) an "elitist" organization to a large number of staff nurses who are involved and vocal about our needs. If we can all be involved with our nursing organizations and also be vocal about our wants and needs, maybe we can change things. I definitely have been trying to change things from the inside for years.