"Nursing believes that education and counseling are the most effective forms of preventive health care available to a health provider.  Nurses have a long history of counseling patients on health care issues from family planning to nutrition to factors that impact reproductive health to cancers to prenatal care." -Testimony of the American Nurses Association, American Association of Critical Care Nurses, National Nurse Practitioner Coalition Before the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee On Women's Health Provisions in Health Care Reform March 9, 1994.

As a nurse, you provide services that are essential to the promotion, maintenance, and restoration of health and well-being.

This section will address specific issues in folic acid counseling if you are a:

• registered nurse;
• advanced practice nurse;
• nurse practitioner;
• certified nurse midwife;
• clinical nurse specialist; or
• other nursing professional.