Policy Agenda

Legislative Advocacy is a Top Priority of AMSN

As the only national professional organization representing the voice of medical-surgical nursing, our strategic mission for patients and their access to high-quality, affordable health care, and focus on issues affecting the work environments and practice of our med-surg nurses,  as seen below. AMSN Board of Directors  has developed a legislative priority agenda in 2019 to clearly define the priority areas for our med-surg nurses. 

The AMSN legislative Priority Agenda Includes:

Advocacy Actions

Our Advocacy Actions help serve to track and promote legislation and policies that enhance medical-surgical nurses and quality care across the health care industry, including hospitals, outpatient settings, in homes, via telemedicine and other non-traditional settings.

Read our Advocacy Action Letters and Statements

Medical-Surgical Nurses in Leadership

Our organization actively seeks opportunities to successfully place medical-surgical nurses in health care stakeholder advisory bodies and leadership positions at the state and federal levels and within the health care sector.

Read our Medical-Surgical Nurses in Leadership Statement

Nurse Workforce Development

The future supply of nurses is critical to patient access to high quality care in every environment, particularly with our aging population and among people lacking access to care. Medical-surgical nurses promote patient access to high quality health care by supporting reauthorization, improvement and full funding of federal nurse workforce development programs.

Read our Workforce Development Statement

Opioid Crisis

We promote implementation and funding of evidence-based policy to prevent and address the national opioid crisis, including the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act (P.L. 115-271) and related measures at the federal and state levels.

Read our Opioid Crisis Statement

Safe Staffing for Nurses

Nurses and their expertise understanding and addressing patient acuity, not one- size-fits-all mandates, are critical to improving and ensuring safe patient care. We advance evidence-based initiatives promoting safe staffing to improve patient health care quality and access, and to reduce health care costs.

Read our Safe Staffing Statement

Safe Workplaces and Professional Respect

In the interest of patient safety and healthy, effective systems for health care delivery, we identify and promote evidence-based strategies that improve workplace safety for medical-surgical nurses and advance their professional recognition.

Read our Safe Workplaces and Professional Respect Statement

Social Determinants of Health

Where health care delivery systems connect with social determinants of health (SDOH), health care has a responsibility and an opportunity to be part of the solution. Medical-surgical nurses support leveraging their roles in patient discharge and transfer processes to advance evidence-based initiatives addressing SDOH to improve health and reduce health care costs.

Read our Social Determinants Statement

Statement from AMSN on COVID-19 Vaccination

The Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses (AMSN) recommends every person indicated to receive the COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine be vaccinated as soon as it becomes available for them. Nurses lead. We strongly recommend that every nurse and health care professional, especially those in direct patient care, be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Read our Statement from AMSN on COVID-19 Vaccination