Tips on how to visit your Illinois Legislators Emphasis to make on your initial visit

Tips on how to visit your Illinois Legislators Emphasis to make on your initial visit

Do you know that your IL Respiratory Care Practitioner Practice Act is set to be repealed on January 1, 2016? Every 10 years our IL RCP Practice Act will come up for renewal like many other healthcare professions The renewal period allows for the ISRC Board to review the current IL Practice Act to recommend changes This renewal period is referred to as the sunset period The new Practice Act must then be approved legislatively to be enacted for another 10 year period

The Illinois Society for Respiratory Care is calling for all Respiratory Care Practitioners to become involved in activities as we move toward the goal of legislative approval of our Illinois RCP License!! For more background information, i go to www.isrc.org. Then scroll down and click on TRACT. The ejuy/ July/Aug ugand Sept/Oct 2014 newsletters have good articles to get you up to date on what s happening! PLEASE DO NOT STOP READING HERE! THE NEXT FEW SLIDES WILL HELP YOU TO KNOW WHAT OUR FIRST PUSH NEEDS TO BE TO MOVE FORWARD TO MAINTAIN OUR LICENSE! WE NEED ALL RCP S ONBOARD!!

We MUST all, as RCP s in Illinois, take the initiative and work together to educate our Illinois legislators on: What is the practice of Respiratory Care? What kinds of patients do we help? Why is our profession important? Remember, they will be voting on our new RCP License so we first have to make sure they know what we do!!!

The Illinois General Assembly There are 118 IL Representative Members There are 59 IL State Senate Members Each IL State Senator Each IL State Senator covers 2 IL Representative Districts

Go to www.ilga.gov Scroll down to the bottom right hand side and find Legislator Look up Then follow the prompts for you to find who your IL Representative and IL Senator are For a more detailed version to help you through this, please see our brief PDF titled Using Legislator Lookup on the ISRC website (www.isrc.org) You will need to download a search application for either a desktop or mobile application to be able to search You can also go to the ISRC website and click on Legislator Search This will take you directly to the ilga web page to begin!

Your State Representative and your State Senator will have both a local District Office and an office in Springfield After your Legislator search gives you the State Senate and Representative District # you live in, you will see where it says more details. Click on that and you will see their name, office locations and phone numbers NOW you are ready to contact them! Remember that we just had an election in Nov 2014. Your previous elected legislators might be changing in Jan 2015. You may want to wait until then to make your appointments so you will be speaking directly to the newly elected officials who will be the ones voting on a new RCP license.

Personal visits to their District Office or to their office in Springfield By visiting their office you will begin to make a relationship with them so they know who you are If you live in one District but work in another District visit legislators from BOTH Districts!

Call the office you are going to visit. Someone from the legislators staff will be able to make an appointment for you with the legislator. You can tell them the purpose of you asking for an appointment Example: I am a Respiratory Care Practitioner. Our license is heading towards sunset and I would like to meet with (name of legislator) to talk about this. Make sure that you give them the best way to contact you back in case they need to get ahold of you to change an appointment.

Identify yourself as a Respiratory Care Practitioner You can tell them that our Respiratory Care Practitioner IL License is heading for sunset (Jan 1, 2016) You want them to know what you do as a RCP and that it is important for our profession to maintain our IL licensure You can offer to be a resource for them on health care issues

EDUCATE them on our profession of a Respiratory Care Practitioner! Remember to say you are a Respiratory Care Practitioner! This is the title of our profession! Let them know what a RCP does and then you can talk about your area of practice. Remember to always tell your personal story. Talk about where you work, the patients you help and that your license is very important to you.

MAKE IT PERSONAL Tell your story in your own words. Your personal message is more important than anything else you can say. You do not have to be an expert on legislation or the legislative process. If they ask if we have a Bill Number yet for our Practice Act just let them know we do not yet but you will get back to them when we do You may not have a lot of time to speak with your legislator SO prepare what you are going to say ahead of time!

Sample conversation starter: Hello, my name is and I am a licensed respiratory care practitioner. I live in (city). I am here because our Respiratory Care Practitioner license is in the sunset period. I feel it is very important to maintain our licensure so I came to talk to you about what I do in my profession. Do you know what respiratory care practitioners do? The Legislator will answer yes or no (see below): If the answer back is no, then explain briefly the role of a RCP. You can then tell your own personal story of your career, where you work/what types of patients you treat and why you are passionate about our role in the care of our patients. If the answer is yes, (for example: Yes, I have a young child with asthma and I ve spoken to respiratory therapists before about his care when we ve been in the Emergency Room. Now you can talk about how respiratory care practitioners work a lot with patients who have asthma.then then you can move into your story about where you work, what you do, etc.

Make sure you are on time when you have an appointment! They may be late due to their busy schedule BUT you must ALWAYS be on time! Treat the legislative staff and the legislator with courtesy and respect. Don t give an answer to a question when you don t know what the answer is. Just tell them you ll find out AND follow up after you do with the answer!

Let s commit to making these initial i i visits to our IL Legislators on or before February 20, 2015!! This is the first step in building our bridge to our goal of a new IL RCP Practice Act before Jan 1, 2016

If you have any questions, please contact your ISRC Chapter Chair or the ISRC Administrator. You can find their contact information on www.isrc.org