Assignment 12.1: Contemporary Health Policy Project: Draft Presentation

Learning Materials

The information provided in these resources will help prepare you to adequately complete this week’s written assignment.

Read the following in your Health Policy and Advanced Practice Nursing textbook:

• Chapter 36, “The Future of Nurse Practitioners”
• Chapter 37, “What the Future Holds for Clinical Nurse Specialists and Health Policy”
• Chapter 38, “The Certified Nurse Midwife in Advanced Nursing Practice”
• Chapter 39, “Healthcare Policy and Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists: Past, Present, and Future”

Additional Required Resources

• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; National Academy of Medicine; Committee on the Future of Nursing 2020–2030. (2021, May 11). Chapter 4, “The role of nurses in improving health care access and qualityLinks to an external site..” In J. L. Flaubert, S. Le Menestrel, D. R. Williams, & M. K. Wakefield (Eds.), The future of nursing 2020–2030: Charting a path to achieve health equity. National Academies Press.
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; National Academy of Medicine; Committee on the Future of Nursing 2020–2030. (2021, May 11). Chapter 11, “The future of nursing: Recommendations and research prioritiesLinks to an external site..” In J. L. Flaubert, S. Le Menestrel, D. R. Williams, & M. K. Wakefield (Eds.), The future of nursing 2020–2030: Charting a path to achieve health equity. National Academies Press.
  • Read the section titled, Capitalizing on Nurses’ PotentialLinks to an external site..

Nurse Practitioners: The Art of Practicing Health Care in Rural West Virginia

Shawn Core: West Virginia is in the top five in the United States as far as diabetes, obesity, tobacco use, COPD, cardiovascular disease. We treat all of that. We’re a jack of all trades, because we do it all. My name is Shawn Core. I am a family board-certified nurse practitioner here at Wetzel County Hospital in West Virginia.

Tad Greene: The role of the nurse practitioner is extremely important. Our hospital, like many other hospitals in our state, has found it difficult to recruit and retain physicians. So our hospital has made a concerted effort to recruit nurse practitioners, and we’ve been successful not only in recruiting them, but in retaining them. And we believe that’s due in large part to the fact that we permit and encourage our nurse practitioners to practice to the fullest extent permitted by our current law and regulations.

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Shawn Core: A nurse practitioner is a registered nurse who went back to school to get a master’s degree to treat and diagnose disease. I can do your yearly physical. I can do your Pap smear, your breast exam. I can do a prostate exam. I can do procedures. I can do punch biopsies and skin lesions, joint injections. I can practice like your family physician. We’re not allowed to order Schedule II narcotics, and the only thing I can’t do is surgery.

And we had four different practices in four different buildings. So I went to the hospital and said, I think that we could put all these practices together. And what happened was they gave us a wing of the hospital that was unused and we opened four different practices. The clinic itself serves 4,784 patients. If we weren’t here, there are many people who would not have healthcare.

Five years ago, we drafted a bill, and over the time period, I ended up going to Charleston to testify in front of the state legislature. AARP was there with us and lobbying and supporting us. They knew the bill better than our own legislators did. I basically implored them, “Please, we need to get this bill passed because if this bill does not pass, 4,000-plus patients will go without healthcare, day one.” The representatives heard that and the governor heard it, and 4334 got passed. And now, even if one of us leaves or if the physician retires, we will be here.

Your older population, 65 and older, they do better with seeing us, I think, because being nurses first, we take in thinking about the elderly not being able to hear as well or see as well. We spend more time with them, and the outcomes are better.

Chuck Saltz: I didn’t know her. I never had met her before. We became real close friends. My blood work came back. I remember talking to her. I said, “My blood work was probably a train wreck.” And she told me that, “Yes, it was a train wreck.”

Shawn Core: Cholesterol was through the roof. He had diabetes. His sugars were terrible, and his thyroid was bad. I said, “I don’t know what to tell you, but we need to start you on these medications.” So he had this life change and he started walking and taking his medication and doing everything I asked. And when I saw him back on a follow-up, he had lost 50 pounds. He was off his diabetic medication. He was off his blood pressure medication and happy as a little lark.

Chuck Saltz: I told her one time that if she ever left, make sure she left a forwarding address because wherever she went, I would travel to be there.

Bonnie Shannon: She’s never turned anyone away. Any time we need her, she’s there. I mean, Shawn participates in so many things, not just here, not just her patients, in her patient’s life. If she were not here, there is no doubt that there’s a lot of people that would not have any health care.

Shawn Core: I want people to know that I’m here from the beginning when you become my patient and I will be with you to the end. And I’ve had patients that have come in and have said, “I will miss you.” And I say, “I will miss you.” And they’ll say, “I’ll see you again.” And I am very honored that they give that to me because they trust.