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...
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…
