HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of our UAPRN MEMBERS !!!!

From Your President:

The beginning of 2015 is an exciting time for everyone, especially for us at UAPRN Georgia! Last week your Executive Board for UAPRN Georgia met with a cadre of emotions. Your state Secretary, Michelle Nelson and I were completely "blown away" after spending the day with our newest state officers, Vice President Teney Ray, Treasurer Deborah Allen, and Director Deborah Dumphy!! They brought new ideas and a new life, filled with shining expectations, and excitement to the Executive Board that made us smile deep within. However, with this excitement and anticipation also came a tearful sadness as I had to say good-bye to two of our outgoing state officers, Vice President Wanda Jones and Treasurer Debi Gass.
Wanda and Debi have been incredible state officers, leaders, and champions to our UAPRN mission collectively for over four years. Without their leadership, patience, vision, and passion for advancing the APRN cause in Georgia, we would never have progressed so far. On a more personal note, I would not have made it through these past 9 months in my battle with liver cancer. In my very darkest of days when I wanted to give up, in their very own unique way- they provided me the courage, the strength to somehow go on even when I faced such a bleak prognosis. Their prayers, their support, and their friendship were vital elements to my physical, emotional, and spiritual survival. To these gracious and poised women, I owe you all more than you could ever imagine. My sincere thanks and gratitude go out to you both.

Just as I have beat my medical prognosis over the past year, I must prepare our members for the upcoming year in order to be victorious over the challenges that lay ahead. In borrowing from CAPRN's 2015 Legislative Agenda, UAPRN Georgia fully supports the following:

Georgia confronts a critical shortage of health care professionals. Our state has one of the highest populations of uninsured individuals in the nation along with unacceptably high rates of preventable chronic illness, disabilities, and premature deaths. Yet, there continues to be a disconnect between the high level (emphasis on high level and NOT mid-level) of care that Georgia's APRNs are qualified to provide in the operating rooms as Nurse Anesthetists, in the labor and delivery rooms as Nurse Midwives, in the board rooms, patients' bed sides, and at the helm of managing government and healthcare institutions as Clinical Nurse Specialists, and in the acute care, long-term care, and in patients' homes as Nurse Practitioners. It is time that this disconnect stops and it must stop now, in 2015!

Despite the historically restrictive laws and regulations in Georgia that have prevented our APRNs from utilizing their fullest scope of practice, we have prevailed. The time has come to STOP, yes STOP pointing fingers of blame at other healthcare professionals for our inadequacies and short-comings!! It is time for us to finally rise to our greatest potential and truly carry out what we were intended to do and to finally become the very essence of the title that we so proudly purport- the advanced practice registered nurse!! This should be the fires that burn in our hearts and bellies as it was what gave me the strength to fight when told that I may have 1 year of life expectancy if I refused to fight ! And if you do not think that your single act or effort can make a significant difference then take a look at our organization prior to just the Wanda Jones or the Debi Gass?

Members of UAPRN will no longer spout off and portray the game of adversarial "Cowboys and Indians" with other healthcare providers. That is an approach that has now and forever more will be laid to rest !! Georgia APRNs will now, more than ever before in the history of our state, demonstrate daily through performance, communicating with their patients, their neighborhood leaders, their children's school teachers, their superiors at work, temple, or other religious settings, and most importantly their politicians to whom they have confidently put into office to be their voice!!
In so doing, our 2015 healthcare policy and legislative priorities include:

Health Advocacy
*Support accessible, affordable community-based primary care, prevention, and chronic disease management services in order to decrease the more costly, high-tech emergency, medical, and surgical treatments in hospitals;
*Support public health and prevention strategies to reduce harm and improve health that are evidenced- based and proven effective;
*Encourage collaboration with other healthcare professionals by striving to reach shared, common goals of improving Georgia's health outcomes and containing health costs;

Professional Advocacy
*Seek provider inclusive and NOT provider exclusive language in all laws and regulations;
*Recognize APRNs in Georgia as the high level providers that we are and remove all discriminatory barriers that prevent our patients from accessing the high quality care that we provide;
*Remove all statutory barriers to practice that exist in order to provide patient focused care;
*Develop quality measures that specifically include metrics for capturing this high level of quality healthcare provided by Georgia's APRNs;
*Increase Georgia's APRNs visibility and transparency in practice in order that our quality and safety metrics may be evaluated;
*Monitor and work together to remove regulatory barriers that prevent Georgia's APRNs in practicing to their highest level of scope and practice. This includes but is not limited to:
- removing barriers that prevent full implementation of prescriptive authority, and
-removing institutional barriers that prevent Georgia's APRNs from practicing to their fullest potential allowed by law.

In conclusion, I have disclosed some very personal information about myself to you all tonight as you all placed me in this role as your leader because you all believed in me and continue to support my vision of where I want Georgia's APRNs to be. Furthermore, tonight I have placed before every member of UAPRN Georgia this year's legislative "blue prints" in a clear and concise manner. I have meticulously done this as it is my turn to say that I believe in you and I believe that each of you will not disappoint me or let me down.

Now it is your opportunity to live up to your title of being an APRN. Now is the time to provide your professional responsibility. Now is the time to be the men and women that you are meant to be. Help your chapter officers, help your state officers, help your professional colleagues by standing up and becoming that voice, that individual, that one person who made a difference and gave me a very personal reason to continue to fight!

Respectfully,
Dr. James F. Lawrence
UAPRN  State President