At the Membership Assembly, we had the opportunity to attend a lunchtime discussion. The discussion that I attended was titled, “Nurses Strengthening the Safety Net”. This discussion focused on the work nurses are doing throughout the country to improve the health of people who live in underserved and under-resourced communities.

The discussion highlighted what some advanced practice registered nurses are doing in the communities that they serve along with individual patients.

There was an APRN from Virginia, who spoke about how she obtained a grant to bring additional community-based health services to the community center in her area. She spoke about how she was able to employ a few of residents and partner with organizations to provide care via mobile vans.

ANA notes that “nurses play a critical, central role in the safety net, ensuring that patients receive appropriate and needed care”.

There was another APRN, who spoke about her work with the Headstart programs in her state and mentioned working closely with school nurses. Her input led to me, speaking about school nurses as I am a school nurse. I added how we are the much-forgotten members of the healthcare team when it comes to children and families. I was able to highlight the National Association of School Nurse’s School Nursing Practice Framework™. School nursing works closely with families and communities to address safety net concerns on a day-to-day basis. It is important for all nurses to understand how important they are to the safety net as ANA has recognized. Our work, whether in the hospital or community, can help to reduce poor health outcomes, it just takes that additional time to have deeper conversations with individual patients and in communities. Listening and knowing their needs is vital to being the nurse safety net that we know we can be.

Reference

National Association of School Nurses. (2024). A contemporary Framework update for today’s school nursing landscape: Introducing the School Nursing Practice FrameworkTM. NASN School Nurse, 0(0). doi:10.1177/1942602X241241092.