Bringing Retail Healthcare NPs Together
It is summer again and the Retail Clinician conference is soon to be a-happening. Again it will be in Orlando, Florida, a pretty good location, especially with air conditioning. This time we will be at a new resort. Hope it works as well as last year. Really, I hope it is better. This year I do not plan to be trapped in a location without transportation. I am also hoping to be part of a gang or at least a gaggle of other NPs. There is going to be a time set aside for networking. Now I don't know what the conference people mean but what I would love to see happen is a bunch of us get together, exchange names, e-mails and concerns about healthcare in general and retail healthcare in particular. I do believe I will have to have some cards made to hand out. Hey, let's have a card swap at the networking time.
I have thought about what it could mean if we as the professional healthcare providers spoke more with a united voice. Most of the time, it is when I get frustrated with others telling us how to practice our profession. The reality is that as employees of corporations, we do not have as much autonomy over our practice as we would if we practice independently. This is one reality a person who chooses to work in retail healthcare generally needs to accept.
But that is just one part of why, I think we, as retail healthcare providers need a larger voice in how retail healthcare develops. As a clinician, as a nurse, I have always known that I am the patient advocate. I speak for patients when they cannot speak for themselves. When my patients were in ICU, dying or on ventilators, I have been the one with them for hours. I knew their body, I saw them suffer or saw them prosper. And it has been my voice that has called the doctor, my actions that moved the legs, turned the body, and sometimes my eyes that cried a few tears. When I was an oncology nurse, with other oncology nurses, we were the ones who organized ourselves and taught ourselves and sometimes the doctors about patient care. It was nurses who pushed for ports and central lines for oncology patients in Georgia. I know because I was one of them. And it was nurses who set the standards for what oncology nurses should be.
Now, I am a provider in a retail clinic, where people come to feel better about their sore throats and earaches and urinary tract infections and, oh, their sinuses. But we are still their advocates. To do this, I believe we must first be educators. We need to teach them about how they can help themselves feel better and be healthier. To do this we need to advocate for more health education in our practices. For greater attention spent on educating our patients about their conditions. What kind of educational materials do you have in your clinics about skin care, sinus infections, colds and fevers? What is the quality of our patient education materials?
We can be advocates for healthcare resources. Are the products we are marketing necessary? Are there products we could provide that could meet more patient needs? Is there a place for clinicians in establishing pricing?
The ANA standards call for involvement of the NP in the heart of our companies. Our voices need to be there, where decisions are made. Are they there? I don't know. I think this can happen if it is not, but I think it needs to be a collective voice. I speak loudly but one voice is a nag or a complainer, many voices bring consensus and I think wisdom.
We have a medical directorand this medical directoris a physician. Now I have a lot of friends who are doctors. It is OK to be a doctor. And I respect a lot of doctors. And in our society I understand why an MD has to be in the role of the medical director. But where does this leave the nurse practitioner? We talk about autonomy but do we practice it? Should we be autonomous? I know where I live it just "ain't so" but where does it leave us as professionals?
I am a talker and I need the help of some of the doers. So, let's exchange cards and maybe network while we are in Florida and perhaps get together over a nice glass of iced tea. And maybe learn to become a better voice to advocate for our patients in the retail healthcare setting. I believe that it is possible to work with the corporate world that employs us. I believe our voices will make retail healthcare stronger and a better bet for our patients.