ARE YOU at the TABLE?

My friend and NP colleague, Evelyn Kieltyka, is often heard inspiring nurse practitioners in Maine to get involved politically by saying,"If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”Evelyn is always at the table, trying to be part of the solution to health care, and she encourages all NPs to join her. If we assume that meetings related to healthcare reform are someone else’s work, or that we don’t need to attend them, no matter how good the care is that we provide, we may be “eaten up” by other interested parties.

Are you at the table? It’s easy to think that others will do the work for us. They’ve been doing it for years. It’s time for all of us to take a seat at the table. We have an opportunity—thanks to the healthcare crisis in this country, President Obama’s initiatives to resolve the crisis, and the sheer number of NPs in this country—to be part of the solution.

Even if new healthcare legislation has been passed when you read this column, it’s not time to be excused from the table. Now is the time to make sure we stay at the table. Not all of us need to become activists and devote ourselves full time to healthcare policies. But each of us needs to do something.

One frustration in my career as an NP has been the fact that our national NP organizations have not always worked together. However, thanks to persistent hard work on the part of many of our colleagues, as well as a common cause, our national NP organizations have started working together more. They have come to the table together to support and influence healthcare legislation on a national level that will improve the quality of care in this country. This unity will also help ensure that NPs are part of this solution by utilizing our full scope of practice!

So, as a profession, we NPs are not only seated at the table, but we are also more united than we have ever been in the past. As they say, there is strength in numbers. And there is no better and easier way to build up our strength, and maintain our place at the table, than by joining a national NP organization. If you do nothing else to come to the table, please join the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners (www.aanp.org) or the American College of Nurse Practitioners (www.acnpweb.org). These two organizations are there at the table, representing all of us, regardless of our specialty or where we live. We need them and they need our support. Imagine the power they would have at the table if they could say that they have a membership of 150,000 NPs! However, far fewer than half of us are individual members of one or both of these organizations. Besides just sitting at the table for healthcare legislation, leaders of these organizations are also promoting, protecting, and advancing our profession. Please join now! Dues are only about $100 a year—a relatively small amount for each of us that could make a huge difference for our profession in the long run.

In addition to joining/supporting an NP group, you can get involved in the healthcare reform process on an individual basis. Get contact information for your senators and congressional representative and write them a letter or call their office. You may want to thank them if they supported legislation that you favored (or gently chide them if they did not) and, while you’re at it, tell them a little about NPs—who we are and what we do. There doesn’t need to be a piece of legislation on the table for you to write that letter or make that call. These legislators need to learn more about us, to hear from us, to have resources whom they can contact if they need more information. Introduce yourself, tell them what you do, describe the NP role, and offer to be someone whom they can contact if they have questions. Then, when you want to contact your legislators about specific issues or bills, they will already know who you are! At the same time, you will already have their email, phone number, or fax number handy from your previous contacts if you need to ask them to support specific bills. I found that the first letters I wrote to my legislators were the most difficult; now, it’s neither intimidating nor anxiety-provoking to write or phone my representatives.

In addition, please consider writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper in which you share your thoughts about health-care reform and identify your role as an NP. With newspapers covering this issue so intensely, you could be a resource for one of their articles. Give them a call and offer your services. Think about the healthcare issues that are most important to you individually and as an NP, and express your view through your local newspaper in an article or an op-ed piece.

Are you sitting at the table? You may have top-notch clinical skills, but if you’re not at that table, even if just symbolically as a member of an NP organization or more literally as a participant in the political process, then you could be “what’s for dinner.” Now is the time to show that the solution to the health-care crisis is 150,000 strong…. NPs. I challenge you to do something today to be a part of the solution.

Tom Bartol can be reached at bartol @gwi.net