“Must See!” Films Public Policy Films from a Student’s Perspective reviews “NOW: Nurses Needed”

This post was written by Jennifer De Jesus a student in the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter and an avid movie watcher. She is also an employee of the Health Professions Education Center, which has one of the largest collection of health films in the New York City area.

 

In the path towards universal health care, an important step is revising our current health care structure, one that can hardly support the changing demographics of the American population. To truly provide better health care, more trained nurses must be incorporated into the system. The solution however, is not to simply increase the number of nurses, but to address issues that affect nursing schools, nursing faculty, burnout of nurses, and placement of nurses in needy communities.

NOW: Nurses Needed on PBS examines how the shortage of nurses is placing strains on the entire health caresystem, as well as efforts by hospitals to remedy the situation. According to a HRSA government study , by the year 2020, there could be a nationwide shortage of up to one million nurses, meaning more patients per nurse, which could result in poor quality for hundreds of thousands of patients.

“If there was ever a time in the history of this country when one thought about the match between a profession and the changing needs of people in the country, this is the time,” Dr. Mary Naylor of the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Nursing explains to NOW reporter, David Brancaccio, during the program. Dr. Naylor also points out that people are not only living longer, but are also living with more chronic conditions, which significantly increases the demand for nurses.

Another contributing factor to the nursing shortage has been the shortage of faculty at nursing schools. According to the AACN’s report on 2010-2011 Enrollment and Graduations in Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing, nursing schools in 2010 turned away 67,563 qualified applicants from nursing programs citing, “insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and budget constraints”. Fewer nurses are choosing to teach the next generation of professionals, resulting in thousands of applicants being turned away from the nation’s nursing schools. Potential nurse educators are instead remaining as senior nurses or turning to pharmaceutical (companies) for employment, which pay more than becoming faculty at a nursing school.

Higher wages and better benefits would decrease the gap in pay between clinical and academic nurses, increasing the retention of nursing professors, as well as encourage potential professors. A remedy to nursing faculty salaries revolves around funding, in which a collaboration between public and private donors can be formed. This partnership would allow nursing schools to increase salaries and benefits, as well as hire more faculty.

Another solution is to encourage more nursing graduates to pursue teaching careers. After all, the gap between tenured faculty and novice faculty is significant, with the former within a decade of retirement. Such bills, as the Affordable Care Act, provide more funding for doctoral students, financially encouraging nursing students into academia.

Hospitals have reacted differently to the shortage. Touro Infirmary in Louisiana is offering monetary incentives, special pay plans, as well as recruiting foreign nurses. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore offers the benefit of paying 50 percent of any college tuition for the children of nurses. Other hospitals are participating in a national wide initiative to provide nurses with a one-year residency. The University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) Nursing Residency Program provides critical guidance in the transition of new graduate nurses into the professional setting; all with the intention to strengthen their commitment to nursing.

With roughly 100 Nursing Colleges, the UHC’s and AACN’s Residency Program is a good first step towards the national collaboration needed to handle the increasing demand for nurses. Like health care, the nursing shortage is not something Americans can afford not to fix.

Jennifer De Jesus

This post was written by Jennifer De

CHMP co-hosts screening of Not In Our Town’s Light in the Darkness

Center for Health, Media & Policy to Co-host Screening and Discussion of Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness

Not In Our Town Anti Hate Discussions Held Nationwide

 What:  Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness Documentary Screening and Discussion

When: Wednesday, December 7, 2011

6:30 PM to 8:30 PM EST

6:30: Light hors d’oeuvres

 

Where:   Museum of Arts and Design
2 Columbus Circle
New York, NY

Center for Health, Media & Policy  is co-hosting a screening and public discussion of a new PBS documentary, NotInOurTown: LightintheDarkness, at the Museum of Arts and Design on Wednesday, December 7th at 6:30 PM.

Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness tells the story of residents of a Long Island village taking action after a local immigrant is killed in a hate crime attack by seven teenagers. While starkly revealing the trauma of hate, the film provides a blueprint for people who want to do something before intolerance turns to violence.

The film screening will be followed by a discussion about what local residents can do to stop hate in New York City and our surrounding communities.

The screening in New York City is  one of 200 screenings hosted nationwide as part of the Not In Our  Town Inclusive Communities Campaign.  From Carmichael, Idaho to Fort Myers, Florida, a cross border event in El Paso,Texas and Juarez, Mexico, Long Island, New York to Pasadena, California,  Community groups, police departments, libraries, faith groups and civic organizations are convening events  that will help find ways to prevent hate crimes and anti-immigrant violence. WNET is one of many public media stations  and national partners, including faith-based organizations, the Department of Justice Community-Oriented Policing Services Office, National League of Cities, National Hispanic Media Coalition, and Welcoming America, are using the film to initiate dialogue about intolerance in their communities.

RSVP HERE

About the Film

In 2008, a series of attacks against Latino residents of Patchogue, New York culminated with the hate crime killing of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant who had lived in the Long Island village for 13 years. Seven local teenagers were arrested for the attack and one was charged with murder.  Over a two-year period, the story follows Mayor Paul Pontieri, the victim’s brother Joselo Lucero, and Patchogue residents as they openly address the underlying causes of the violence, work to heal divisions, and begin taking steps to ensure everyone in their village will be safe and respected.

 Not In Our Town:  Stop Hate. Together.

Not In Our Town highlights communities coming together to stop hate. Developed by The Working Group in 1995, Not In Our Town began with a PBS documentary that told the story of how people in Billings, Montana joined together to respond to a series of hate crimes in their town. This simple, powerful story of people banding together struck a chord with audiences, and created a model that inspired viewers around the country to hold their own campaigns against intolerance.

For more information about Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness, including the film trailer, discussion guides, and press materials, visit NIOT.orgor PBS.org/NIOT.

 

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Center for Health, Media & Policy to

USDA’s MyPlate and the Farm Bill

May May Leung, PhD, RD is an assistant professor at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College.  Her research expertise includes the development and evaluation of innovative health communication and community-based interventions to prevent childhood obesity.

The new MyPlate food icon, which the federal government released this past June, makes a recommendation for Americans to fill half their plate with fruits and vegetables.  Unfortunately, such messages that promote knowledge and awareness are not the only mechanisms needed for people to carry out such healthy behaviors.  A necessary mechanism, yet a pressing obstacle for many Americans, particularly the vulnerable populations, is the limited access to affordable fruits and vegetables.  This barrier has come about, mainly due to the imbalanced distribution of federal agricultural subsidies.   According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, 63% of the subsidies support meat and dairy production, while less than 1% supports fruits and vegetables.  Other subsidies include, 20% allotted for grains and 15% for sugar, starch, oil and alcohol.  As you can see, the subsidies rather contradict the recommendations supported by MyPlate.

So, what can be done?  The Farm Bill, which is the primary agricultural and food policy tool of the federal government, provides the support for different agricultural commodities.  It is renewed every five years and the next one is scheduled to pass through Congress in 2012.  The upcoming Farm Bill needs to be reformed to shift the subsidies to be more aligned with the MyPlate recommendations, which would improve the accessibility and affordability of fruits and vegetables, and making it more likely for the recommendations to be adopted as healthy behaviors.  Mark Bittman expressed this sentiment quite nicely in the New York Times, “What subsidies need is…reform that moves them forward.  Imagine support designed to encourage a resurgence of small- and medium-size farms producing not corn syrup…but food we can touch, see, buy and eat – like apples and carrots …”  I can imagine it, can you?  May May Leung, PhD, RD

May May Leung, PhD, RD is an