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Issue date: 4/13/07 Section: A Closer Look

Media Credit: Parker Willis Lobbyist Kyna Iman meets with nurses at Capitol building on March 27. The Missouri Nurses association is one of her clients.

Media Credit: Parker Willis

Iman also helped another bill through legislature that would affect nurses statewide.

The bill would allow nurse practitioners to prescribe controlled substances. Currently, Missouri is one of only three states that do not allow nurse practitioners to do this.

"In a lot of rural areas in Missouri there are rural health clinics and federally qualified health centers, where it is federal law that they have a nurse practitioner on site or on call 24 hours a day. But a physician only has to be there once every two weeks," Iman said. "And since the state doesn't give them the authority to prescribe controlled substances and there's no doctor there it makes it very difficult to provide the healthcare that these people need in these communities."

She said the biggest reason the bill hasn't been passed yet is because the doctors don't want to give up their leverage. But since doctors don't go to a lot of these areas, she believes it shouldn't matter.

"I feel very passionate about this bill, being from a place where we only have a nurse practitioner," Iman said. "One doctor retired and the other moved away."

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