Ah the spring rains are here…Rose Festival can’t be far behind!

Soon we will all be busy with our summer activities and the 2009 Legislative Session will be drawing to a close. We had one bill introduced on behalf of NPO/ONA and this passed through committee and the Senate easily last month and is now in the House and held up by language. We hope to work with the chair of the house committee to get the language clarified so we can get this bill passed which will ease some of the administrative headaches faced by those who currently have to personally dispense medications to your patients while anyone else in the office can do this nonjudgmental function for a physician’s patient.

There is also a lot of discussion regarding a bill attempting to get prescriptive authority for Psychologists. For more discussion on this bill go to Nurse Practitioners of Oregon’s Collective X website to engage your colleagues in debate. Our initial stand was that of neutrality and after further discussion and review of their legislation as modified, the leadership of NPO/ONA has chosen reaffirm our neutral stance on this issue. We know all too well how our physician colleagues treat us every time we try to get similar privileges because we are doing similar work. As long as we are adequately prepared we should be able to do the same work and the same would be true for other health professionals. The psychologists need to make their case to the appropriate legislators. There are more than enough mental health patients for all of us to see and we do offer a dimension of connection to laboratory monitoring and testing that may not be available to psychologists. Nurse practitioners have spent many years and fought many battles to prove ourselves to be worthy members of the health care team and we should not be battling among ourselves and with our colleagues.

The bigger battle is health care reform and universal coverage and even more importantly, universal access to a primary care system that can handle the needs of all Americans. Rep. Kurt Schrader held a health care reform forum in Oregon City on Saturday May 9^th and Susan King RN MSN presented the need for inclusion of Nurse Practitioners and Clinical Nurse Specialists in the primary care home model of care delivery. Susan did an excellent job articulating the role nurses can play in promoting the growth and full utilization of primary care over more costly and less patient centered specialty care.

Our NPO survey is completed. Thank you to the 514 NPs who took a few minutes to respond to the survey. Members of NPO/ONA will be receiving a complimentary copy of the survey and it will be available for sale later this month. Thank you to Sue Davidson of the ONA staff for compiling the results.

The Executive team of NPO plans to travel around the state to meet with local groups of NPs to talk about the activities of our professional organization. Anne Barry Lever and I met with a group of NPs at the Lane County NP Educational meeting in March and Anne will be traveling to Southern Oregon and the Klamath Falls area to meet with groups of NPs. We have another trip to organize to the coast to meet with local NPs over there…this is a tough job sometimes! Hmm, make a trip to the coast or stay in Portland?

Another new group has been started in the Portland Metro area thanks to the organizing efforts of Karen Reisinger FNP and Larlene Dunsmuir FNP. We have started a Journal Club and it will be topic focused. The next meeting will be June 15^th at 7pm at South Tabor Family Medicine office. Contact Larlene at larlene.Dunsmuir@providence.org if you want more information.

We are in the midst of making nominations for our next leadership team and if you are interested in running for an office or have someone to nominate please contact Mariah Taylor at oprahsangel2000@msn.com. This year we will need a new secretary, nominating committee chair, and chair elect. Information about these positions has also been compiled and is available from tangedal@oregonrn.org.

Be sure to set aside time to attend the annual educational conference in Eugene at the Valley River Inn on October 15^th-18^th, 2009. We feel very fortunate to again have Margaret Fitzgerald as one our plenary speakers. In this time of economic cutbacks, local travel is a much more cost effective option for clinicians and Eugene is centrally located in the state and there are many lodging options in the area.

Stay in touch with colleagues via the Collective X web site and this web site which is the official site of your professional organization. If you have any questions I am also willing to try to answer questions of any of my NP colleagues at pamdv1@comcast.net.

Pam DeVisser FNP

Nurse Practitioners of Oregon

Chair 2008-2009