DEAR COLLEAGUE

With the Today show in the background, I went about my morning routine. Ann Curry was speaking with Avery Comarow, the editor of 'America's Best Hospitals,' an annual feature in U.S. News & World Report that I look forward to every year. As I rushed to dress for work, though, I was only half listening.

But my ears pricked up when Comarow mentioned that the ratio of RNs to patient beds was a key factor in gauging the best hospitals. Curry asked a few questions, then Comarow did it again—reiterated how vital nurses are to patient care and how the survey team includes nurse/bed ratios in its analysis of hospital quality.

Two plugs in one interview, before millions of viewers. He made my day.

I had to know more. I called Comarow to ask about the survey and his impressions about health care and nursing. Readily accepting my call, he told me that U.S. News & World Report has been doing this survey for 13 years. For the first 3, the best hospitals were chosen only on the word of specialty physicians who'd been asked to name the top hospitals in their field.

Then in 1993, the framework changed. The magazine had asked focus groups of nurses and physicians to list measures of hospital quality, and the RN/bed ratio ranked high on everyone's list. Since then, nursing care has been a factor in the best-hospitals equation, along with patient mortality and other data from the American Hospital Association.

I asked Comarow if he had an opinion about how the public sees nurses. He told me that in the past they assumed a nurse would be available whenever they needed one—at the bedside day and night, unlike physicians, whom they'd see only briefly. The public valued us because we were always there for the sick and injured.

But now they know better. Comarow said that recent stories in the media have highlighted the problems you and I have known about for years—cases of patients who've suffered from errors because too few nurses were available. Yet the public doesn't blame nurses for poor care arising from the nursing shortage. They know that the cutbacks have been motivated by money and that many decisions affecting bedside care have been extremely shortsighted.

Thanks to respected journalists like Avery Comarow speaking out about the importance of nurses, the public hears more of the truth daily. And politicians are taking notice, as evidenced by the Nurse Reinvestment Act signed by President Bush in August (see Career Focus on page 73 of this issue).

We can't let this strong current of support just wash over us. Write, send E-mails, or call journalists and politicians to encourage their interest in our work. They have the clout and we have their attention.

Cheryl L. Mee, RN,BC, MSN
Editor-in-Chief, Nursing2002

Go to http://www.usnews.com/usnews/nycu/health/hosptl/tophosp.htm to learn more about the U.S. News & World Report survey.