Contemporary Issues

Contemporary Issues Paper The Nurse Reinvestment Act of 2002 will hopefully bring relief to the nursing shortage. It was passed by Congress in July 2002 and was signed by President Bush August 1, 2002.

The Nurse Reinvestment Act bill was originally introduced in April 2001 to aid in reducing the nursing shortage by increasing the number of nurses in our country and also to ensure that every nurse in the field has the skills they need to provide the quality care patients deserve. This legislation is important for nurses and patients, and essential to ensuring that our health care system can function at its best. "This new law is seen as an important first step to addressing the nation's worsening nursing shortage and improving patient care" (Meredith, 2002).

"The Nurse Reinvestment Act establishes nurse scholarships, nurse retention and patient safety enhancement grants, comprehensive geriatric training grants for nurses, faculty loan cancellation program, career ladder grant program, and publish service announcements" (Meredith, 2002). The nursing scholarships provide educational scholarships in exchange for commitment to serve in a public or private non-profit health facility determined to have a critical shortage of nurses. The period of time depends on how much assistance they receive. The nurse retention and patient safety enhancement grants assist health care facilities to retain nurses and improve patient care delivery through more collaboration between nurses and other health care professional and more involvement by nurses in the decision-making process. The comprehensive geriatric training grants provide for resources to train and educate individuals in providing geriatric care for the elderly. Such resources can go to development and distribution of curricula, faculty development, and classes and continuing education. The faculty loan cancellation program provides for loan cancellation to nurses to allow full-time study and rapid completion of advanced degree studies. For cancellation of a set amount of loan, recipients would be obligated to spend a certain amount of time in a faculty position at a school of nursing. The career ladder grant program assists individuals in the nursing workforce to obtain more education and establishes partnerships between Health Care Providers and Schools of Nursing for advanced training. "This is intended to retain current nursing staff and demonstrate to prospective nurses the profession is upwardly mobile" (Meredith, 2002). The public service announcements will advertise and promote the nursing profession, educate the public about the rewards of a nursing career, change the stereotypes about nurses, and advertise public assistance available to people interested in a nursing career.

The impact of this legislation on professional nursing practice will be great. The Act will support the recruitment of new students into America's nursing programs by funding national and local public service announcements to enhance the profile of the nursing profession and encourage students to commit to a career in nursing. The Act will also reinvest in nurses who are already practicing by providing them with education and training at every step of the career ladder and at every health care facility in which they work. It will ensure that nurses can obtain advanced degrees, from a B.S. in Nursing to a PhD in Nursing. It will place nurses in internships and residencies where they can receive the specialized clinical training they need to respond to the complex health care needs of today's patients. The Act will also help train nurses in geriatrics to ensure that our health care providers are prepared to care for the needs of our nation's growing senior population. "The Nurse Reinvestment Act will create, for the first time in history, a National Nurse Service Corps (NNSC). Like the National Health Service Corps, the NNSC will administer scholarships to and repay the loans of student who commit to working in a health care facility that is experiencing a shortage of nurses" (Donley, 2002). In urban, suburban and rural communities