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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

National Nurses Month: NC Nurses Want Expanded Access to Primary Care

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Wednesday, May 4, 2022   

This is National Nurses Month, and North Carolina lawmakers continue to debate lifting restrictions for advanced-practice registered nurses so they can provide care without physician oversight.

More than two dozen states have passed laws similar to the SAVE Act, which stalled in the General Assembly last year.

Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, dean of the school of nursing and vice chancellor for nursing affairs at Duke University, said many of the state's health-care access problems existed before the pandemic and now have reached a breaking point.

"Ninety-seven of North Carolina's 100 counties are actually classified as primary health-care-professional shortage areas," he said. "In those particular counties, there's either no access to care or there's suboptimal or limited access to care."

Guilamo-Ramos said expanding Medicaid would make health-care affordable for an estimated half-million more residents, although North Carolina is one of a handful of states that has chosen not to do so. He said he believes independent APRNs could step in to fill gaps and reduce costly emergency-room visits.

But groups such as the American Medical Association, maintain that physician oversight is needed for patient safety and quality of care.

Winifred Quinn, director of advocacy and consumer affairs at the AARP Public Policy Institute's Center to Champion Nursing in America, countered that physician oversight, which is often done remotely, has little to no impact on APRNs' ability to deliver top-notch primary care.

"Decades of research shows that that kind of chart review has no impact on quality of care," she said.

Guilamo-Ramos said independent-practice nurses could ease the burden on the state's health-care system and create better outcomes for patients, who consistently have ranked nursing as the most trustworthy and ethical profession.

"And that comes from longstanding, 30-years-plus of data that has shown that clinical outcomes associated with NP practice are good," she said.

Research from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill showed that the state could potentially lose around 21,000 nurses to retirement by 2033.


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