Consistent Stress in Medical Field

ANA Social Policy Statement

The author of this report has been asked to offer a brief report about the most recent iteration of the American Nursing Association (ANA) Social Policy Statement. The statement has been issued several times and has always had many important facets and details. Given the urgent care background of the author of this report, the author will focus on the part of the ANA's new statement that focuses on duties that must be performed under extreme conditions. These conditions include family needs, personal health, epidemics/pandemics and so forth and the juggling of all of the above. While many point to the duty of nurses to care for their patients, there are proverbial lines in the sand that require a balanced and delicate approach.

Background & Discusson

The general expectation of nurses and doctors is that they are required to perform without fail when an emergency situation comes up. Indeed, the author of this report works as a registered nurse at an urgent care center and this standard is put to the test all of the time. However, to suggest that there are no other factors involved in this standard is less than true. For example, there have been several disease breakouts or potential breakouts in recent months and years. Just a few examples are listeria, Zika and norovirus. Other factors to take seriously is burnout, work/life balance and extreme emergencies like shootings, earthquakes, hurricanes and so forth (Fowler & Diane, 2015).

A real-world example would be that of the medical professional who was put under quarantine when she came back from West Africa as a volunteer. The woman, Kaci Hickox, returned from work as an epidemiologist, who came back from working in Sierra Leone. At issue was that there was an active Ebola outbreak in the area at the time and she was thus forced to be in a 21-day quarantine despite being asymptomatic and testing negative for the disease on two different occasions. Rather than stay quietly in the quarantine, she spoke up about the matter to the point that she asserted that her "human rights" were being violated. Of course, Ebola was not actively spreading in the United States and the politicians and other leaders of the country wanted to keep it that way. Since then, Zika has emerged as the newest threat and there are some active breakout areas throughout the country including in Florida. While the chances of a person with Zika walking into the author's urgent care work location is extremely slim, the implications of that coming to pass would be seismic and massive. Anyone and everyone that came into contact, directly or indirectly, with the patient would have to be quarantined and treated and there would be a ripple effect from there (Cohen, 2014).

Even if that never happens, there are many people, medical professionals and otherwise, that dread such outbreaks and how they can spread. Nowadays, the scare de jour is the Zika virus and there are indeed some areas of the United States that are provably having issues with that disorder (CDC, 2016). This is something that the social policy statement by the ANA addresses and it is wise to always keep that in mind because of the potential or actual consequences of any of those mentioned events or dilemmas happening. Indeed, burnout and work/life balance would be the much more common issue to face by a wide margin but things can change in an instant and it can literally happen in any location around the country or world (Fowler & Diane, 2015).