Center for Nursing Advocacy responds to Google's lack of nurses on Health Council

[rnformatics]

We recently told you about how Google has formed the Google Health Advisory Council, but has omitted nurses and other key professionals. In the outrage and disappointment that followed the announcement, it seems that some groups have reached out to the Center for Nursing Advocacy for assistance in getting Google's attention.

The center for Nursing Advocacy has responded with the following email:

From: Sandy Summers Date: July 5, 2007 6:12:53 PM EDT
To: press@google.com ress@google.com>
Subject: Advisory Group on Health

Dear Ms. Missy Krasner:

I am writing in regards to your Advisory Group on Health. Many nurses have emailed me regarding the apparent lack of nurses on your council.

There are 2.9 million registered nurses in the US, who vastly outnumber any other health profession. Nurses deliver care 24/7, preventing patient deterioration, intervening to save lives and improving patient outcomes.

Excluding nurses from your advisory group means that you will not get their perspective, which is valuable, since they deliver nearly all the hands-on care patients receive.

As is evident from these past few weeks, nurses fight for patients rights when physicians and others may not. Many nursing groups helped to publicize Michael Moore's Sicko because improving the health care system is necessary if we are to deliver quality care to our patients. Nurses look at patients holistically and advocate for that which they need. In seeing that poor insurance plans or no insurance can kill patients as easily as a health care error or poor quality of clinical care--it is important that nurses advocate for a solution to the health care system.

The global nursing shortage, which is taking many lives, is fueled by decades of inaccurate and negative media stereotypes, which causes decision-makers to not know who nurses are or what they do. This leads to the exclusion of nurses from important decision-making groups such as the Advisory Group on Health.

Over 350,000 RNs in the US have graduate degrees, and about 30-40,000 of those have PhD's or other doctoral degrees. I am confident that we can find you many qualified and esteemed nurses to sit on your panel.

I urge you to broaden your advisory group to incorporate at least as many nurses as there are physicians so that the nursing voice can be heard and patients can get their concerns adequately addressed.

Please let me know if I can answer any questions. Thank you for your consideration.

Best regards,

Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH
Executive Director
The Center for Nursing Advocacy
203 Churchwardens Rd.
Baltimore, MD USA 21212-2937
office 1-410-323-1100
fax 1-443-705-0260
ssummers(at)nursingadvocacy.org
The Center for Nursing Advocacy

It looks like the ball is in Google's court now...