Nurses finally prevail [WV]
Posted over 9 years ago by Nicholas M Perrino
"After years of trying, the West Virginia Nurses Association is just one step away from realizing its goal of removing barriers to allow them to utilize the full scope of their training to provide health care in the state. The legislature has given final approval to HB 4334 and sent it to Governor Tomblin.
The bill gives advance practice registered nurses (APRNs) 'full practice authority' so they can do more of what they were trained to do. West Virginia would become the 22nd state to join one of the growing trends in health care delivery in this country.
The directional shift has been going on for years, but a critical moment occurred in 2010 when the Institute of Medicine released a landmark report calling for a change in the roles, responsibilities and education for providers.
'Regulatory and institutional obstacles—including limits on nurses' scope of practice—should be removed so that the health care system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills and knowledge in patient care,' said a summary of the report.
The proposed change here met stiff resistance from MDs. They raised concerns that nurses would be essentially practicing medicine, something the docs do only after many more years of training than the APRNs receive.
Currently, West Virginia nurses must maintain collaborative relationships with physicians, but the bill reduces that to a three-year requirement and then the APRNs can operate more independently. The APRNs have long argued that the current requirement was often more paperwork than collaboration, and they will still have working relationships with physicians."