A Message From the Chief Nurse

Nurses,

This month of August has brought us waves of heat as well as waves of change. Transitions in leadership have been seamless and we remain anchored to our mission. We continue our work with transformation of the Corps, as well as our work to create the future of nursing in public health.

Office of the Surgeon General

Vice Admiral Richard H. Carmona completed his four year term as Surgeon General July 29, 2006. We celebrate his contributions to our nation and are grateful for his service. His Open Letter to the USPHS will be posted on the nurse website (http://phs-nurse.org) by the end of this week. Nurses have inquired about where to send personal letters to VADM Carmona. These can be addressed to him c/o Parklawn Building, 5600 Fishers Lane, Room 18-67, Rockville MD 20857 and labeled “Personal”.

The Deputy Surgeon General has been appointed by Secretary Leavitt to assume the position of Acting Surgeon General. RADM Kenneth P. Moritsugu continues to champion the priorities of increasing the public's understanding of health disparities, prevention, preparedness, and health literacy. He has always been and continues to be supportive of nursing, and I look forward to our working with him. His message and letter of introduction will be posted on our web site this week.

Nursing Leadership & Outreach

I met with the leadership of CDC and national nurse leaders in public health to support the first cooperative agreement funded by the CDC to strengthen public health nursing. This CDC partnership is with the Association of State and Territorial Directors of Nursing (ASTDN) and is directed to build the public health nursing capacity in the country.

I also met with the Chief Nurse Scientist of WHO, Dr. Jean Yan, to share information and strategize how international nurse leaders can influence policy and obtain support for nursing in their Ministries of Health.

I was able to meet with the leadership of the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) to discuss their Draft Vision Paper on the Future Regulation of Advance Practice Nursing. Input and collaborations with other nursing organizations are planned by NCSBN.

Transformation

Work in transformation of the USPHS is continuing. The Chief Professional Officers (CPO) met in retreat to discuss how the Professional Advisory Committees and CPOs will be involved in facilitating transformation directives. The Secretary met with the HHS Agency Heads to discuss the special transformation workgroup reports and implementation strategies. In addition twelve new centralized transformation positions are planned to be in place to support this effort by September.

Three of the recently announced Transformation positions are being re-announced for further consideration of interested applicants. These positions are Transformation Operations Officers for Position Classification, for Billet Systems and for Officer Selection Systems. To view the original announcement and the billet descriptions of the above positions, please see the links at the bottom of the eBulletin announcement at http://dcp.psc.gov/ccbulletin/articles/TransformationJune2006.htm. Deadline for application is August 31, 2006.

Force Readiness

The Corps remains at about 75% qualified in basic readiness; we have some work to do! Immunizations, fitness and BLS are the top areas of readiness deficiency. Tier 1 rapid deployment teams (RDFs) are in serious and urgent need of nurses for the teams to be completely staffed. I encourage nurse officers in Tier 3 to work with your supervisors to get approval to join a Tier 1 RDF team as soon as possible. Tier 1 nurses have the advantage of working and training with a predefined group of colleagues. Deployment schedules are also predictable for being on call. Tier 1 officers need to respond within 12 hours. If you are able to obtain supervisor support to change your status to Tier 1, please contact OFRD.

Our nurse officer strength is 1334 nurses. We had 14 calls to active duty and 13 retirements in July (retirements normally average 3.5/month). Have you considered what contribution you are making to recruit our future nurses? Recruitment is everyone's responsibility!

Commissioned Officer Evaluation Report (COER)

Officers are reminded to begin to think about preparing their COERs for FY 2006.

Please verify that you have a COER in your official personnel file for every year since 1999. An absent COER for any year after 1999 will disqualify you for promotion. Contact OCCO for how to handle a missing COER.

Comment

Last year at this time there were no emergency response teams in PHS, no hurricane issues, no Surgeon General’s second hand smoking report, no pandemic flu plan and no transformation implementation plans. What a difference a year makes. As we stand ready for the challenges that await us as nurses in health care, we need to reflect on how far we have progressed since the long hot summer last year. Nursing is valued more now than ever, and nurses have risen to the challenges of the past and will confront those that emerge as we near the end of this year’s summer season. Thank you for your service to our Nation.

Carol A. Romano, PhD, RN, FAAN
Assistant Surgeon General
Chief Nurse Officer, US Public Health Service