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Alix Fried

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(New York, NY) — Nancy Falchuk, National President of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc., praised the Israel Ministry of Health’s decision to create the new status of “Nurse Expert,” thereby recognizing the increased expertise of nurses with advanced preparation. This is the first recognition of higher status for nurses in formal health care services and comes at a time of looming shortages in nursing.

“This new role is an important stepping stone in the career advancement of nurses and enhances the profession of nursing in Israel,” said Falchuk. “The new status dovetails with Hadassah’s Clinical MA program in Jerusalem. Nurse Experts will assume clinical leadership roles within nursing and the health care system by having the ability and authority to independently provide expert care in their area of specialty.”

Falchuk also praised another initiative of the Ministry of Health: funding 80 percent of tuition for potential nurses.

Hadassah opened the first nursing school in pre-state Israel in 1918 and has been a strong advocate for professional nurses. Nurse graduates, beginning in 1921, are widely credited for the establishment of modern public health care that transformed medicine in the region. In the United States, the Hadassah Nurses’ Council, comprised of nurses around the country, advocates for nursing advancement in the US and in Israel.

Nurse Experts in Israel will differ from American Nurse Practitioners in their scope of practice, but this may change in the future considering the impending shortage of both doctors and nurses, the financial constraints on the health care system and the increasing health needs of the population. “The role of the Nurse Expert is crucial to the development of the health care system and to the improvement of the quality of health care despite the fact that it has drawn extensive fire from the doctors’ union,” says Dr. Miri Rom, who heads the Henrietta Szold-Hadassah School of Nursing at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem

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