As a nurse, one of my passions is end of life care. Hospice and Palliative care can be as fulfilling as saving a life or educating a patient on better health practices. Nurses have the ability to change the way we practice health care by getting involved with professional organizations and reaching out to legislators to support health care bills.
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Choosing Dr. John Zerwas was an easy choice to make. He is a local legislative representative, Doctor, and co-author of a palliative care bill. The rationale for choosing this legislative representative was because Dr. John Zerwas has a career in medicine, which places him in an exceptional position to author and support health care bills (Zerwas, n.d.). Dr. John Zerwas was the best …show more content…
Zerwas regarding this specific bill. It was also explained that Dr. Zerwas is an advocate for more education in the health care industry. We spoke about a bill that was no longer in legislation connected to palliative and hospice care education in health care institutions. According to Spicer, Heller, and Troth (2015), providing hospice care training to future nurses can be a challenge for nurse educators, the curriculum is generally spread throughout the courses with no specific course or education dedicated to palliative or hospice care. Palliative care and hospice care need to be taught through proper sequence from novice to expert. There are limited number of institutes that provide training (Lai, Ying, & Chao, 2009). Palliative care has shown to increase the quality of life and lower cost for those patients with serious illnesses (McCormick, Chai, & Meier, 2012). The rationale for choosing to talk about education related to hospice and palliative care was explained as a passion in …show more content…
However, there were questions directed to the assistant to on the behalf of the state representative. According to an article by Meier (2011), evidence demonstrates that patients with serious illness or multiple chronic conditions receive inadequate quality of care. Do you think that Dr. Zerwas believes that to be the case here in Texas? The answer was yes, he was sure that Dr. Zerwas would agree with that statement. Another example of content was according to Ferris, Gomez, Furst, and Connor (2007), nurses can participate in the role of an advocate and help educate legislators on the need for further support and education. What other suggestions would Dr. Zerwas have for nurses who would like to become more involved with health care bills? The assistant responded by saying nurses have many opportunities to speak out on health care bills in Austin at the State Capital, he also added that becoming involved in professional organizations would also be beneficial to nurses. The question was asked how Dr. Zerwas makes his decisions to either support or not support a bill. The answer was that if the bill benefits the public, Dr. Zerwas would support it. He is passionate about health care, education, and doing what is right for the public. When obtaining information regarding issues, many times the legislatures communicate in committee meetings,