Donna Shalala to Penn Nursing Graduates: “Give the Profession a Little Swagger”

Newswise — With three million nurses in the United States, nursing professionals “hold the power and influence to make those numbers speak” in the new era of health care, said Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, at the 124th commencement of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing on Monday.

With the implementation of the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010, which provides health insurance coverage for all Americans, “health care providers -- and especially nurses -- have a unique opportunity to transform the way health care is delivered in the United States,” said Shalala. Under health care reform, 32 million more Americans will have access to health care, requiring more health care providers to meet the need. Shalala sees nurses as the leaders in a reformed health care system. Shalala, who chaired the Committee on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing at the Institute of Medicine, told the Penn Nursing graduates that their expanded role under the Affordable Health Care Act should “elevate nursing to its proper leadership place in the health care pantheon.”

However, to be truly successful, nursing will require “a coherent national practice policy,” said Shalala. Current policy varies by state, for example giving nurse practitioners prescriptive privileges in one state but not in another. “We must remove scope-of-practice barriers as fast as we can,” said Shalala. “They are so yesterday. Preventing nurse practitioners from providing the care they are trained to give is inexcusable and, I should point out, a waste of money and lives.”

Shalala called on the graduates to claim a leadership role in health care reform: to ensure that their voices are heard “on rounds and on the record,” to demand “full partnership with physicians,” and to “give the profession a little swagger.” Today’s nursing graduates, she said, are entering the “Golden Age of Nursing” and should lead the way in the re-design of the health care system in the U.S.