SYLACAUGA — Coosa Valley Medical Center’s vice president of patient care services is representing the hospital and the area on the Alabama Board of Nursing.

Amy Price began serving on the 13-member board earlier this year after being appointed to the position by Gov. Bob Riley. Her term runs through the end of 2012. The board meets on a monthly basis.

Price said, “It’s a learning curve for sure. Every single month I’m enlightened on processes that we can improve and on things we do very well already.

“I would say as a clinician and coming from a rural community, I think it’s very healthy for the Board of Nursing to have members of the rural community on the board because in the state of Alabama so much of our healthcare is given and provided in the rural communities. I think it gives rural healthcare a voice at the table.”

The main responsibilities of the board are to protect the public and advance the practice of nursing in the state. There are approximately 50,000 registered nurses and 18,000 licensed practical nurses in Alabama.

“The issues the board deals with include licensure. We license nurses to work in the state, LPNs or RNs or advanced practice nurses. We have oversight for nursing education, the curriculum and the structure of the programs. We have oversight of advanced practice nursing, oversight for nursing practice and then oversight for continuing education,” Price said.

In order to be appointed, she had to submit an application and go through an interview process. She also had to do a bit of campaigning by collecting letters of support for her appointment from many people around the community.

“I had probably a hundred or more letters of support. It came from people in the hospital and the community,” Price explained.

After the interviews, two names were chosen and sent to Riley to make the appointment, and Price was picked to serve on the board.

She feels her service on the board allows her to bring back ideas that might help CVMC.

“I’m the chief nursing officer here, but I’m also able to be involved at the state level,” Price said. “I get to bring back information and pass it on to people here in the facility, and it makes our facility stronger, and it helps represent all the nurses who work here at our facility at the state level.”

Price’s main goal on the board is to improve the state’s educational system for nurses.

“What I want to do is to work with the schools of nursing to get more instructors in the schools of nursing so we can improve the nursing shortage by graduating more nurses,” she said.

Price lives in Sylacauga with her husband Dale and her children Catherine and Lily Frances. Harry Brown Jr. of Sylacauga also serves on the board in the consumer seat.

“He brings, to the clinicians on the board, a consumer perspective on healthcare, and then the other 12 members are clinicians,” Price said.

To Price’s knowledge, she and Brown are the only two people in Talladega County who have served on the Board of Nursing.