19 Sep Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Democrat, represents the 30th

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Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Democrat, represents the 30th Congressional District of Texas in the United States House of Representatives. Congresswoman Johnson was the first female African-American Chief Psychiatric Nurse at a veteran’s hospital in Dallas. In 1972, she was the first nurse elected to the Texas State House. Advocacy is an important role as a nurse. Advocacy is defined as supporting a cause when it comes to patient care, this includes supporting their well-being, physical and emotional care (Helbig, 2018). It is important that nurses are able to advocate who those who cannot advocate for themselves and being able to meet the needs of the patients.

Congresswoman Johnson introduced the National Nurse Act of 2019 to help improve the health care of Americans across the country. Johnson mentioned that by appointing a National Nurse to join the Surgeon General, advocating for nurses will provide care for millions of Americans each day. She added that the National Nurse Act of 2019 would “empower a medical professional to focus on critical issues, such as promoting healthier practices, improving health literacy, and decreasing health disparities”.

Meet Eddie Bernice. (2019). Retrieved September 15, 2020, from https://ebjohnson.house.gov/about/meet-eddie-bernice

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To advocate means to support or plead for a cause or a proposal. The nurse stays longer with the patient than other healthcare personnel and so knows the problem surrounding their care better than other healthcare workers. The nurse serves as a patient advocate relaying needs and choices to the providers and other healthcare worker, advocacy comes with trust and so the nurse has a lot of trust trusted on her by the patient. Many nurses who have taken on politics, knows what the patients pass through and also limitations to the quality of care that the patients deserve go ahead to propose bills to help the nurses at the care front be equipped to give out quality care.

One legislator and nurse that I want to discuss is Rep. Lois Capps a democratic from the state of California who has served in the house of representatives, as a nurse she has worked at the bedside and also as a nurse instructor which gives her the best experience to serve as an advocate for both nurses and the patient. (culture of health blog, 2014). While in office she made nursing shortages a priority and sought for inclusion of provisions to increase funds made available for nursing students, increase opportunities for nursing faculty. A bill she authored is the Nurse Reinvestment Act which has the aim of increasing nurses’ number which includes Advanced Practice Nurses,also the bill fights for increment in school of nursing faculty and alsohelps in improving the quality of nursing care through the title VIII Nursing Workforce Program (culture of health blog, 2014).

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