A quick summary of the core issues:

HR 1195 Workplace Violence Prevention for Health Care and Social Service Workers Act - violence has been on the rise in Healthcare since even before the pandemic. It’s a combination of factors encompassing everything from people who are sick and confused to drug related violence and violence because people just don’t like nurses telling them what to do (for instance, no eating before surgery), and many other reasons. Here’s a good article on that: https://www.ajmc.com/view/violence-against-healthcare-workers-a-rising-epidemic

HR 3165 Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act of 2021 - ratios are a commonly discussed topic in nursing because a higher ratio of nurses to patients means that we have more time to spend with each individual patient and ensure that they receive adequate attention to assess and treat them. Unfortunately nurses are constantly pressured to take on more and more patients at a time so that the hospital makes as much money as possible. Often these ratios are wildly unsafe and don’t allow nurses time to check for and treat basic complications that would otherwise be no problem. That’s why there’s laws being proposed to limit the amount of patients each nurse can have in various settings. Here’s a good article on that: https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/ratios

HR 666 Anti-Racism in Public Health Act of 2021 - race is well-known to have profound and wide reaching effects on health, here’s the CDC’s article on that: https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/racism-disparities/index.html

Bring Awareness of the Implications of Pay Caps - recently a huge group of congressional representatives signed a letter proposing to cap the wages of travel nurses. They’re trying to spin this as just being about the cut that the travel agencies are getting, but the truth is that the high rates of pay that travel nurses have been getting these past two years had the power to finally make it worthwhile to fairly pay regular staff nurses. Suppressing travel nurse wages is just a move to try and keep nurse wages low across the board. https://www.wwno.org/public-health/2022-02-09/travel-nurse-salaries-are-rising-due-to-demand-some-hospitals-say-its-price-gouging

Support All Frontline Healthcare Workers (MD, NP, RN, LPN, CNA, RT, EMT, & FireFighters) - as nurses we understand we’re part of a larger Healthcare team. We’re in this together and we can’t do it without our fellow Healthcare workers.