The incoming Administration’s new Covid-19 task force excludes nurses

But we can build back better! 

November 11, 2020 — President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris have now announced the names of the 13 members of their new Covid-19 task force. The panel is mostly physicians and includes no nurses. But nurses provide the vast majority of the skilled care that Covid-19 patients receive, and they have deep understanding of how the crisis is playing out on the ground. Nurses also have diverse public health and policy expertise, including in the fields of infection control, health disparities, and community health. Nurses know and do a great deal that physicians do not. So with nurses, the panel will be far more effective. Please join us in urging that nurses be added!

Click here to sign the letter (or read it below)

I am writing to urge you to add nurses to your Covid-19 task force. While I applaud your creation of this panel to help guide the nation’s response to the crisis, the panel is composed largely of physicians. There is not a single nurse.

Nurses provide the vast majority of the skilled care that Covid-19 patients receive. In doing so nurses take enormous risks, often without adequate personal protective equipment. They have deep understanding of how the crisis is playing out on the ground. Indeed, nurses are the most numerous health professionals in settings that are critical to controlling the virus, from hospitals to long-term care facilities to public schools. And nurses have diverse public health and policy expertise, including in the fields of infection control, health disparities, and community health. Nurses know and do a great deal that physicians do not. So with nurses, the panel will be far more effective.

For a fuller explanation of why nurses are essential for any national Covid panel, please see the excellent op-ed that UCLA nursing professors Anna Dermenchyan, RN, PhD, and Kristen Choi, RN, PhD, published in The Hill in August 2020. Among their points is that nurses are often omitted from such decision-making bodies, to the detriment of the public and nursing itself, which struggles to get the respect and resources it needs to save lives. https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/513191-white-house-coronavirus-task-force-is-missing-a-nurse

Please add nurses (a single token nurse is not sufficient) to your coronavirus task force, so that it has the expertise it needs to address this public health crisis.

Thank you.