“This Veterans Day, the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialist is urging the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and Congress to grant full-practice authority to all advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) employed at VHA facilities, including its clinical nurse specialists (CNSs), nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists and nurse midwives.
Granting full-practice authority to clinical nurse specialists at VHA facilities would immediately improve access to vital health care services for our nation’s veterans by streamlining health services, eliminating redundancies and bottlenecks and alleviating delays in care delivery.
Every day across this country, CNSs provide expertise and support to nurses caring for patients at the bedside, help drive practice changes throughout their organizations, and ensure the use of best practices and evidence-based care to achieve the best possible patient outcomes. If every health care setting employed CNSs, more of the care provided would be based on research and best practices, our health care system would be more efficient, and we would all be healthier.
NACNS is proud to be a part of the APRN Workgroup, a coalition of national advanced practice registered nurse membership organizations working to improve access to health care by decreasing barriers to APRN practice, in calling for this common sense solution. We will continue to work with other nursing and health professional organizations to ensure that our veterans receive health care services as safely, timely and cost-effectively as possible.”
Peggy Barksdale, MSN, RN, OCNS-C, CNS-BC is the President of the 2015-2016 NACNS Board of Directors.