National Nurses Week (May 6-12, 2015)
“Ethical Practice. Quality Care.”
Key Messages
In recognition of the impact ethical nursing practice has on patient outcomes and the
quality of care, 2015 is designated as the “Year of Ethics.” Keeping with this focus, the
theme for National Nurses Week (May 6-12) is “Ethical Practice. Quality Care.”
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All nurses have a critical responsibility to uphold the highest level of quality and ethical
standards in their practice to ensure the delivery of superior health care to patients,
families and society.
Ethics is an essential component of everyday nursing practice across all specialties and
settings and is inextricably linked to quality care.
The revised Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive Statements was released in
2015—the first update since 2001. The revision ensures that the Code applies to modern
clinical practice and advances in quality, and keeps pace with transformations in health
care.
Throughout the year, educational activities and events focused on ethics are planned,
including webinars, a resource-rich website and a symposium.
The Code of Ethics serves as a guide for carrying out nursing responsibilities in a manner
consistent with quality nursing care and the ethical obligations of the profession.
The new Blueprint for 21st Century Nursing Ethics: Report of the National Nursing
Summit constitutes a plan for individuals and organizations to implement to improve
work environments, health care quality and health outcomes.
Nurses are recognized by the public for upholding high ethical standards and are highly
trusted as a result.
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An annual Gallup survey shows that the public has ranked nursing as the top profession
for honesty and ethical standards for 13 straight years.
The Center for Ethics and Human Rights (an ANA center) advocates for public policy to
ensure that ethics and human rights issues that affect quality of care and patient- and
community-health outcomes are addressed in health care.
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Examples of ethics and human rights issues that the Center addresses include: moral
courage and distress; genetics and genomics; serious advanced illness; end of life;
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euthanasia, assisted suicide, aid in dying; capital punishment; forgoing nutrition and
hydration; and protecting and promoting human worth, dignity and human rights.
Nurses are working to achieve the National Quality Strategy (NQS) goals of better care,
affordable care and healthy people and populations.
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Nurses are leading efforts on three top quality priorities: patient safety, care coordination
and patient/family engagement.
o Up to 20 percent of Medicare patients are re-admitted to hospitals, often because
of inadequate care coordination. Medicare now is paying for certain care
coordination services, recognizing that the quality of transitional care provided by
RNs is crucial to reducing re-admissions.
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Nurses provide education, guidance and resources to individuals and/or families
managing chronic conditions or an illness. RNs help them understand discharge and care
plans, medication regimens, appointment follow-ups, referrals and equipment needs.
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Nurses are working with the Partnership for Patients, a public-private collaboration, to
improve patient safety and reduce cost by reducing hospital-acquired conditions by 40
percent and 30-day hospital re-admissions by 20 percent.
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With input from a technical panel of national experts, ANA has introduced an innovative,
evidence-based method to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), a
common hospital-acquired infection and a shortcoming in quality.
Nurses are incorporating ways to measure the value of their services into national
performance measurement programs. Nurses are using that data on nursing performance
to develop strategies to improve health care quality.
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Nurses are working on national health care quality panels to incorporate nursing
performance measures for specific federal public reporting and performance-based
payment (i.e., accountability) programs.
Example: The National Quality Forum, which recommends health care performance
standards, has endorsed two quality measures developed by nursing researchers to
improve patient safety — patient fall rate and patient falls with injury. It's an indication
of the value nurses provide in human and economic terms.
Nurse staffing is a critical component of quality care. To ensure the public has access to
comparative data, ANA strongly supports all efforts that promote institutional reporting
of nurse staffing measures such as skill mix and nursing hours per patient day (NHPPD).
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