Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510300034
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Some nurses are not facing facts about what's happening in the health care workplace, while most are just overwhelmed by what's being asked of them, a Radford University professor said Saturday in a report to the Virginia Nurses Association.
A survey question on what nurses need brought a number of responses, including "more staff" and "more money," and those are unrealistic answers, Marcella Griggs said.
"It's not going to happen. We need to help our colleagues along who are thinking that way," she said.
The main finding, however, was that many nurses don't have the educational background to deal with today's patients, she said.
Griggs and Marie Morris, director of the nursing department at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, headed a Workplace Advocacy Task Force the nurses group set up last year to identify nursing concerns in Virginia.
In answers to questionnaires and in focus groups, nurses told task force members that patients are sicker, older and have more complex problems. But these patients also are more educated about their illnesses and demand more information from professionals, survey participants said.
Yet, two-thirds of the nurses who responded to the survey had completed only two-year hospital or community-college programs, Griggs pointed out.
These programs prepare students technically but do not give them the courses they need to become the leaders hospitals want them to be, she said.
"Don't you see?" Florence Jones Clarke of Richmond said in reaction to the report. "The less-skilled people are being asked to do the most."
The patient has become more sophisticated than the staff, said Clarke, who is president of a local chapter of the Black Nurses Association. She said her chapter advises students and encourages them to get a bachelor's degree even if they think they can't afford it.
The average survey participant was a 39-year-old with 12 years' experience and seven years in the current job. The workers said they are faced with more paperwork and more high-tech chores, have to know about more and more medications, must do grief counseling and pain management, and often have to supervise non-nursing personnel.
Nurses at all levels need better critical thinking skills, said Betsy Ashbrook, professor of nursing at Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville.
"They are no longer expected to do just what the doctor says or just to react to a situation," she said. "They must be able to analyze and determine what is best to do."
These are frightening times for nurses, she said.
Hospitals used to court the Patrick Henry students with pizza parties, but now the students have to do the courting, Ashbrook said.
Also, some of the offers are "per diem," or by day, as needed. While the pay is higher than for full-time employees, the benefits aren't there, she said. And another disadvantage for new graduates is that home health care companies don't want them until they have had hospital experience.
Nurses have to prove their abilities; they don't just get the job because they are registered nurses, she said.
The nursing association's 2,200 members represent about 41/2 percent of the state's staff nurses. But last year, the group voted to take an aggressive role in helping all nurses - especially those who work in hospitals - get the education and/or support they need to cope with upheavals in the profession.
The survey was the first step, said Georgine Redmond, association president and associate dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at George Mason University.
The next step will be to find a way for the association to link with the Virginia Organization of Nurse Executives and maybe even the Virginia Hospital Association, so they can work together to upgrade staff skills.
The Virginia Nurses Association has to have the support of nurse administrators to set up continuing-education programs or any type of training that will help staff nurses, Redmond said.
Some networking among the groups has begun, said Sandra Ryals of Roanoke, state chairman for the Alliance of Nursing Organizations and Specialty Groups.
In a bit of irony, though, Ryals ran head-on into the conflict among various nursing groups as chairwoman of local arrangements for the Virginia Nurses Association convention at Hotel Roanoke.
Ryals said a nursing administrator at a Roanoke hospital withdrew a promise of $400 toward convention expenses in protest of an American Nurses Association campaign called "Every Patient Deserves a Nurse."
The campaign's theme was that a registered nurse is better prepared to deal with patient emergencies than the less-trained or unlicensed, who increasingly are used in hospitals.
Ryals wouldn't identify the administrator or the hospital, except to say that it is owned by Carilion Health System.
Carilion owns Roanoke Memorial and Community hospitals. The presidents of both said Saturday that they were unaware of anything like that happening but that they might not necessarily know about such a decision.
Ryals said she thinks the public should know about such actions, because it helps explain why nurses are reluctant to talk about their concerns. She also said she intends to meet with Carilion officials to discuss the incident.
The American Nurses Association does include some union groups, but Virginia's group is not a labor union, she said.
by CNB