A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
Celebrating
YEAR OF THE
Nurse
This issue of Texas Nursing is dedicated to celebrating nursing around the globe in honor of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring 2020 to be the Year of the Nurse and Midwife. For Texas Nurses Association (TNA) and our members, this proclamation (at right) is a reminder that nurses are unified across the world in wanting to provide quality care to people in need. The situations faced by nurses in every corner of the globe are universal experiences. Bringing care to rural Texans with mobile operations, thinking innovatively to reduce health care costs, and developing strong health care systems to improve quality of care—these are all parallel to nursing initiatives seen worldwide. In Texas, we will be short of 60,000 registered nurses by 2030. With the support of thousands of members and in coordination with 22 other nursing organizations, TNA has made it a legislative priority to address the nursing shortage. During the last legislative session, we advocated for bills that secured nursing shortage reduction funds and nursing faculty loan repayment funds. We are aiming even higher for the upcoming session. In this interim year we will develop our strategy for the next legislative session. We want to learn more about the issues that are most pressing to nurses and nursing as a profession. Why do nurses leave the profession? Why is there such high turnover in nursing? How can we entice more young people to enter nursing? How we can increase access to care for Texans? As we think through what policy changes can improve nursing practice and health for Texans, we’ll also be following policy around the world. During Year of the Nurse and Midwife, WHO hopes to promote nursing leadership in health policy, especially in countries where nurses may not yet be seen as the experts they are. Raising nurse voices will take a combination of fighting stigma, sexism, and classism, while promoting interdisciplinary cooperation, local nursing education, and best care practices. Join us as we ask even more questions and search for solutions together. We hope that by capturing even a fraction of your expertise, knowledge, and lived experiences, we can improve nursing for all Texans and watch as those nurses spread innovation across the globe.
Kanaka Sathasivan, MPH Director of Communications Texas Nurses Association