OARN Annual General Meeting
April 12, 2008
Policy and Political Action Annual Report
This past year brought about a few changes in the Policy and Political Action portfolio for the OARN. Under the guidance of Lori Korkola (former co-director of this portfolio), Nancy Boaro and Nicholas Joachimides have joined forces to act as the new Co-Directors of this portfolio. An exciting twist on the make up of this partnership is that both the Adult and Pediatric Rehabilitation communities are represented within a very important portfolio. The latter part of 2007 and into 2008 has been focused on identifying important political issues as they relate to Rehabilitation Nursing in the province and across the continuum of care.
On January 24, 2008, both Nancy Boaro and Nicholas Joachimides and our current president Debbie Driver had the exciting opportunity to attend the RNAO’s political action day at Queen’s Park, where several distinguished politicians delivered powerful speeches about the current state and future of Health Care in Ontario. We had the opportunity to ask John Tory a question related to optimizing access to rehabilitation services and supportive housing for patients with disabilities. Nancy Boaro met with Laura Albanese, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Culture (York South-Weston, Liberal).We also had the opportunity over lunch to meet Premier McGuinty and his Senior Health Policy Advisor Sacha Bhatia to discuss our concerns related to patient flow, ALC and access to timely and specialized rehabilitation services and supportive housing. He agreed to meet with Debbie Driver, Lori Korkola and Nancy Boaro of OARN as well as other RNAO members by teleconference to further discuss the issue. This teleconference took place on January 30th, 2008. We have drafted a follow-up communication to Sacha Bhatia. OARN has committed to developing a position paper to highlight the issues of access to timely and specialized rehabilitation and supportive housing for individuals with a disability.
Nancy Boaro and Nicholas Joachimides were both very excited to meet several OARN members at the OARN Rehabilitation Conference in February 2008, and were both very impressed by the energy of not only the speakers but also the attendees. It was an impressive display of the work that is currently being done by our rehabilitation colleagues across the province.
Nancy Boaro and Nicholas Joachimides will continue to build the Policy and Political Action page on the new OARN web-site. In the up-coming weeks several links and new information will be provided for all OARN members to read and get informed on the issues that impact on the quality of care that we all strive to provide.
If the first part of 2008 is any indication of the new possibilities with policy and political action within the OARN watch out for the second half, and 2009 will only prove to be bigger and better.
Acute care saves lives, Rehabilitation gives meaning to them!
Submitted by:Nancy Boaro and Nicholas Joachimides
Co-Directors Policy and Political Action