Thanks to all for a wonderful year
Article Outline
- A Life-Changing Experience
- The Work of The Board
- Travels Abroad
- Completion of an Ambitious Agenda
- Notes
- Copyright
Sharon A. Mcnamara, RN
After spending more than 100,000 miles flying during my year as President, I have become intimately acquainted with airline magazines. In an article from the November 2005 issue of the United Airlines magazine Hemispheres, Bonnie McElveen-Hunter, chair of the American Red Cross, speaks of the “personal gift of our-selves.”1(p16) Her short article is a thank-you to United Airlines for all their efforts to assist with Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita relief, but her message spoke clearly to me and reminded me of the gifts that so many of you, my AORN colleagues, give throughout the year to AORN, to each other, and to our patients. This giving continues every day at the patient's side; in your local chapters, state councils, specialty assemblies, national committees, and task forces; at the Board table; and in collaboration with our dedicated staff members at AORN Headquarters. We are a virtual army, like the Red Cross, “with dignity of purpose, sharing intellectual and creative stimulation in solving issues and, within the process, making colleagues and friends for life.”1(p16) This President's Message, colleagues and friends, is my thanks to you for giving me the opportunity to represent and serve you this year as your AORN President.
A Life-Changing Experience
The year has been a life-changing experience for me as I traveled the United States and the world interacting with perioperative nurses who face similar challenges in providing patient care and dealing with workplace issues, whether they work in a two-room or 75-room OR suite. The similarities in our problems were striking, but the diversity in how we solve our problems was energizing. I realized how dynamic the nursing process is and how creatively we use it, knowingly or unknowingly, to address all levels of opportunity for change. I also became grounded in the fact that AORN is the unifying force that helps you, the experts, come together and discuss, research, validate, and provide information, tools, and resources to educate perioperative nurses and, thus, standardize and raise the level of care for all our patients.
Together we have developed or revised 11 position statements, seven guidance statements and guidelines, three competency statements, and seven recommended practices. This has taken a phenomenal amount of time, energy, and dedication from our volunteer work force and the Headquarters staff members. Our second annual National “Time Out” Day has expanded AORN's reach and recognition. The Safe Medication Tool Kit brought us attention in national and local print, radio, and television media. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices awarded AORN one of its National Cheers Awards, which honored us for having “set a superlative standard of excellence for others to follow in the prevention of medication errors and adverse drug events.”2
The Perioperative Nurse Week theme, “Perioperative Nurses: Vital to Care, Knowledge to Share,” energized our chapters and members to reach out to high school and grade school students, educating these potential perioperative nurses on the difference we make to our patients and the joy and purpose a nursing career can bring to one's life. Three hundred This is Perioperative Nursing videos were distributed. Twenty members reported visiting 42 schools and interacting with 2,607 students. I hope that in some way, you will keep the lines of communication open to these students so that if they have questions or need information, they will have a perioperative nurse expert to mentor them in their quest.
Never let an opportunity go by to recruit a potential nurse. This lesson was clearly demonstrated to me by then-AORN President Sheila Allen as we stood in line to get Philly cheese steak sandwiches in a questionable area of Philadelphia (where else would you get an authentic Philly cheese steak?). A group of young people were standing in line ahead of us, and this was my first exposure to members of the blatantly pierced and tattooed punk culture. President Allen did not let their appearance deter her, however. By the time we had spent 45 minutes discussing a nursing career with these adolescents, we had two of them considering nursing and six others aware of the opportunities available in nursing. They looked very different from my vision of a potential nursing student, but their goals were not any different than those of a typical student. So, what will the perioperative nurse of the future look like? Beauty, like the ability to be a good nurse, is found within. Do not pass up an opportunity to add diversity to our mix.
The Work of The Board
I especially want to thank you for electing the outstanding Board of Directors that you gave me to carry out the work of the Association this year. We had a number of difficult decisions to make, and I was proud that these volunteers put in long hours at home studying data, questioning or requesting more information, and making extra trips to interact in person when necessary to be sure that we had all the important information to make knowledge-based decisions. Business related to fiduciary responsibility that ultimately would affect our ability to advance the profession of perioperative nursing required tough deliberation and decision making.
Management Solutions.
One of the Board's decisions was to restructure AORN Management Solutions, an AORN subsidiary that recruits interim managers for hospitals and surgery centers. The business will be expanded to include consulting services. This required an outlay of money to support the strategic direction and purposeful plan for enhancing operations and service.
Legislative agenda.
Action to set AORN's legislative direction and promote the requirement for an RN circulator in every OR in the regulatory or legislative language of all 50 states prompted a closer evaluation of how the Association's resources are used to accomplish our legislative goals. The Board made a decision to hold action on RN first assistant (RNFA) reimbursement at the federal level that would involve money, time, and resources from the Government Affairs Department for two years. The Board can readdress this issue when the legislative and regulatory environment has recovered from natural disasters, the war in Iraq, and the disaster-and terrorist-preparedness initiatives that are a current priority. Clearly, the Board stands by the position of philosophically supporting reimbursement for RNFAs and will move forward in addressing this opportunistically at the state level.
The AORN Journal.
A strategic planning session with the Executive Committee of the Board; AORN Journal Editor-in-Chief, Nancy Girard, RN, PhD, FAAN; editorial board members; editorial staff members; and executive staff members initiated an investigation into finding a commercial publishing partner for the AORN Journal. A complete review of current business practices, opportunity for growth, and ability to increase fiscal advantage while maintaining or enhancing the quality of the Journal demonstrated that an outside publisher had immediate resources to offer that AORN would not be able to provide for five to 10 years. The Board and a team from this strategic planning group evaluated four publishers and made a decision to contract with Elsevier to publish the AORN Journal. It is important to note that AORN retains ownership and responsibility for all Journal content.
Zhou Yan (seated, center) shares experiences with (from left) Cynthia T. Long, RN, BSN, BSA, MEd, CNOR; President McNamara; and Patsy P. Davis, RN, CNOR, at WakeMed Health and Hospitals.
Two very important products that AORN members will gain from this partnership immediately are an electronic manuscript submission system and access to the entire AORN Journal archives, online and fully searchable. This partnership also will provide AORN with opportunities to publish other resources for our members, including more books, newsletters, and supplements. Monetarily, this arrangement assures AORN of a monthly income greater than the current income of the Journal and the opportunity to increase subscriptions.
These were only a few of the tough decisions that required the Board members to share their intellectual and creative capital, keeping the good of the Association members always at the core. Your Board was awesome.
Travels Abroad
Diversity was my theme this year, and it was abundantly demonstrated in AORN's vision to be the global leader in perioperative nursing. I represented AORN in Canada, China, Guatemala, Korea, Mexico, and Taiwan. President-elect Paula Graling, RN, MSN, CNS, CNOR, and I visited Brazil, and she journeyed to Japan and Korea. Board member Patrick Voight, RN, BSN, MSA, CNOR, also represented us in Japan, and Vice President Lorraine Butler, RN, BSN, MSA, CNOR, represented us in England.
Each of these trips increased our reach internationally and provided opportunities for us to share presentations to educate foreign colleagues and improve the provision of patient care worldwide. The visits also provided insight into the multifarious customs and practices of our colleagues around the globe. Many of these visits were made possible through partnering with our industry colleagues. These partnerships will be sustained through the work of the International Resource Committee, composed of AORN members and industry and international colleagues.
The visit to China created an exchange opportunity for Zhou Yan, RN, manager of the OR in Changhai Hospital, Shanghai, to spend a week with me at WakeMed Health and Hospitals, Raleigh, NC, to experience an American surgical suite. The staff members and I gained as much from the adventure as Yan did. It was rewarding to watch staff members share their expertise and their pleasure in caring for patients of various cultures. Questions and answers about practice and lifestyles were shared from both sides, and it was evident that all were benefiting from the exchange of ideas. This may be another type of international opportunity in which AORN could make a difference as the global leader in perioperative nursing.
Completion of an Ambitious Agenda
The title of an article in the April 2005 issue of Infection Control Today was “Incoming AORN President Sets Ambitious Agenda for Perioperative Nurses.”3 Yes, it was an ambitious agenda, and thanks to this superior Board of Directors; outstanding volunteer members; and our faithful, dedicated AORN staff members under the leadership of Executive Director Tom Cooper, CAE, we have completed that agenda and then some. It has been an outstanding year, and I thank every one of you for the part you played, because we could not have done it without you. As I said at the close of my acceptance speech last April, “AORN members, it's all about you.”
Notes
- . “Voices” . Hemispheres . November 2005;15–16
- ISMP Announces 8th Annual Cheers Awards Recipients (news release, Huntingdon Valley, Pa: Institute for Safe Medication Practices, Nov 1 2005)
- . “AORN President sets ambitious agenda for perioperative nurses” . Infection Control Today . April 2005;9: Also available at http://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/articles/541feat2.html (accessed 23 Jan 2006)
PII: S0001-2092(06)60185-3
doi:10.1016/S0001-2092(06)60185-3
© 2006 AORN, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc All rights reserved.
