ADVOCATE News - What’s New in Policy

AMSN Takes Action to Help Secure Future PPE Supplies; Congress Responds Favorably.

AMSN urged Congress to strengthen future supplies of needed PPE for health care settings in an Aug. 6 letter to Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), sponsor of the “Make PPE in America Act” (S 1306).

The Senate responded by keeping the provision in major infrastructure legislation it passed Aug. 10, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (HR 3684). The House later committed to further legislative action on the bill later this fall.

“For months into the pandemic, medical-surgical nurses and other nurses and health care professionals were left without needed PPE, vulnerable to catching and spreading COVID-19 among one another and patients,” wrote AMSN President Dr. Summer Bryant, DNP, RN, CENP, CMSRN. “This vulnerability was and is preventable. As part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Make PPE in America Act would send a clear demand signal to U.S. manufacturers by authorizing federal procurement of PPE over at least two years.” Read the letter.

In Regulatory Comment to Federal Workplace Safety Agency, AMSN Speaks Out for Med-Surg Nurse Safety

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) should support nurses’ role in advancing patient safety at the local level and promote consistent application of one source of evidence-based truth in health care facility decision-making, wrote AMSN in an Aug. 20 regulatory comment letter to the agency.

“As OSHA considers regulatory approaches that advance worker and patient safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, responsive to coronavirus variants and to local conditions, and applicable to future pandemics, we recommend the agency encourage adoption and implementation of safety governance frameworks that support the engagement and professional contributions of nurses in general, and medical-surgical nurses in particular, to local health care delivery system policy, procedures, implementation and evaluation,” wrote AMSN President Bryant. “Such initiatives should be based on a single source of truth recognized for the rigor of its evidence and validation: the guidelines and public pronouncements of the CDC.” Read the letter.