Center for Ethics and Human Rights recognized with prestigious Cornerstone Award
The American Nurses Association (ANA) Center for Ethics and Human Rights has been honored with a Cornerstone Award from the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH). The Cornerstone Award is the highest honor given for enduring contributions by an institution to the fields of bioethics and the medical humanities. The Center for Ethics and Human Rights Advisory Board and ANA Senior Policy Advisor Liz Stokes, JD, RN, will be recognized on October 20 during the ASBH annual meeting.
“For over 25 years, the ANA Center for Ethics and Human Rights has advocated for social justice and the protection of human rights and tirelessly provided ethical guidance, both theoretical and practical, at the state, national, and international levels,” ASBH said in a statement.
Learn more about the center. Read more about the award.
ANA and CDC release white paper on nurses’ role in antibiotic stewardship
The American Nurses Association (ANA) collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to release a white paper detailing how nurses can significantly affect patient safety through improved antibiotic use. The paper outlines four key areas in which nurses can play a critical role in antibiotic stewardship: improving antibiotic use at the bedside; improving nurses’ participation in antibiotic use activities; education and training for nurses; and engaging nursing leaders in stewardship efforts.
The paper, “Redefining the Antibiotic Stewardship Team: Recommendations from the American Nurses Association/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Workgroup on the Role of Registered Nurses in Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Practices,” is the culmination of a series of online meetings and a live, one-day conference where an ANA/CDC nursing workgroup identified ways for nurses to get more engaged and become leaders of antibiotic stewardship efforts in the United States. Download the white paper.
Medicare IPPS final rule released without ANA recommendations
On August 2, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published the Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) rule for fiscal year 2018, without including two American Nurses Association (ANA)-recommended nurse staffing measures. ANA submitted a comment letter on the proposed rule to CMS on June 13 that strongly endorsed the inclusion of two nurse staffing measures. ANA also submitted a separate comment letter focused solely on the inclusion of the staffing measures, which included 26 co-signatories. The fiscal year 2018 rule goes into effect October 1.
However, CMS did allow for the possibility that the two staffing measures could be included in the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program and Hospital Compare for fiscal year 2019 and/or subsequent years.
Despite this setback, ANA is developing a coordinated strategy to ensure collaboration with members and the consumer groups who support the inclusion of these important measures to strengthen its position going into the comment period for fiscal year 2019.
As a result of ANA’s action alert, there were 1,363 comments submitted to CMS, with 259 Facebook shares and 57 Twitter shares of the action page. ANA thanks all those who supported this initiative.
Read the letters and more about ANA’s policy and advocacy work. And stay up to date.
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