
Ed. note: Today at 3:30 pm EDT, Mary Wakefield, a Registered Nurse and Administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, will host a session of Office Hours on Twitter to kick off National Nurses Week and discuss what the health law means for nurses. Find out how you can get involved here.
Thanks to the President’s new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, there will be significantly more nurses to help make our health care system stronger. One place where we’re already seeing more nursing positions added is in community health centers, which provide low-cost care to more than 20 million people across the country, many of whom do not have health insurance or live in communities with little access to other sources of quality health care. These centers have added about 3,000 jobs for nurses since the Obama Administration’s efforts to expand the community health center program began in 2009.
A new report released today, the beginning of National Nurses Week, shows some of the other ways the new law is helping invest in education and training opportunities for nurses: