Celebrating the Freedom to Leverage the Power of Nursing

Article Outline

• A New Level of Nurse Leadership
• Leadership is an Inherent Part of the Nursing Role
• Driving the Health Care System of the Future
• Leading the Charge for Quality, Patient-Centered Care
• Now is the Time
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As we celebrate National Nurses Week, May 6 to 12, the presidents from the member organizations of the Nursing Organizations Alliance are coming together to share a common message with our members. Now, more than ever, registered nurses have even greater opportunities to be leaders in all aspects of health care: be it at the bedside, within professional associations, or in the halls of the US Congress. As nurses, we must play a greater role in ensuring that our nursing practice is evidenced based, forward thinking, centered around safe patient care, leadership-rich, central to health care decision making, and always at the center of the “action.” The theme “Nurses: Caring Today for a Healthier Tomorrow” articulates our belief that, in building an even more powerful nursing profession, we can take the lead in addressing the complexities of patient care, reshaping the work environment, and influencing broader health policies to benefit patients and the public. Nurses are making a difference every day.

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A New Level of Nurse Leadership 

I have long believed that every perioperative nurse is a leader and that perioperative nurses demonstrate this each time we circulate for a surgical procedure. We display our leadership skills every time we manage the complexities that we respond to in our ORs. Think about our colleagues who practice in the high-tech world of robotic surgery. It takes a leader to efficiently organize the room setup, ensure the uneventful progress of the procedure, and keep the patient safe, while at the same time exhibiting the leadership skills needed in the event that an emergency disengagement of the robot is required. Nursing is about growing and adapting to meet the public's needs. Now is the time for perioperative nurses to fully embrace an even stronger level of leadership, by partnering with physicians, pharmacists, infection preventionists, and other health care professionals to direct and manage care effectively.

AORN has a long history of collaboration and partnerships. Our presence at forums with our partners in surgery, infection control, and industry is not new; however, now is the time to strengthen our partnerships with our nursing colleagues to leverage the power that a unified nursing voice gives us. A unified voice will allow us to be among the chosen who will lead health care systems in creating delivery models that will ensure the best outcomes for patients and their families. Our presence at these tables continues to expand. For example, AORN is a corporate sponsor of the National Patient Safety Foundation, a member of the National Quality Forum, a member of the Institute of Medicine's Best Practices Innovation Collaborative, and on the board of directors of a new organization, the Nursing Quality and Safety Alliance.

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Leadership is an Inherent Part of the Nursing Role 

It takes a community to help strengthen both informal and formal leadership skills among nurses. Now, more than ever before, perioperative nursing needs nurse leaders who can mentor, educate, and inspire the novice nurse. The importance of the relationship between perioperative nurses and AORN needs to be recognized and strengthened. AORN is working toward creating a “learning environment” in which novice nurses can develop leadership skills to assist them in understanding their role as professional perioperative nurses.

Active engagement in emerging technology, such as blogs, virtual communities of interest, and other social media opportunities is critical, and AORN is at the forefront in this arena. AORN's OR Nurse Link gives you new ways to engage with other members. Webinars and virtual meetings allow the AORN Board of Directors to have real-time information that will help us provide resources to you. We want and need to know what keeps you up at night. This will allow us, in partnership with the Headquarters staff, to better meet your needs as perioperative nurses. Our goal is to make AORN indispensable for perioperative nurses, expand our sphere of influence, and grow our membership.

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Driving the Health Care System of the Future 

Now, as nurses, we must manage more than the individual patient's procedure. We must direct and reshape the perioperative environment to ensure the most-effective use of nursing resources. Clearly, the time has come for perioperative nurse leaders to drive the paradigm shift that will represent care of the surgical patient in the future. We must continue to advance the initiatives that ensure patient safety, such as preventing wrong site surgery. We were leaders in this area when AORN introduced National Time Out Day in 2004. This preceded the current emphasis that is focused on the World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist. In response to a need expressed by our members, AORN is raising the bar, actively partnering with leaders in the field to create a template to meet the challenges in our ORs by merging the Joint Commission's Universal Protocol™ with the Surgical Safety Checklist.

More than a decade ago, AORN led the nursing community in creating a commonly accepted nursing vocabulary with our Perioperative Nursing Data Set. We have now partnered with Computer Science Corporation to create a revolutionary and cutting-edge schema that overlays existing perioperative nursing documentation. The schema includes the Perioperative Nursing Data Set; a crosswalk with AORN standards and recommended practices; and accreditation, regulatory, and mandatory reporting requirements. Adoption of SYNTEGRITY™ Standardized Perioperative Framework will help build a national data repository and portal to collect and report clinical and operational data to perform effective benchmarking for operational and clinical outcomes.

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Leading the Charge for Quality, Patient-Centered Care 

Nurses have frequently been early adopters of quality improvement, by leading in the development, implementation, and evaluation of key measures, such as pain scales and pressure ulcer management. We have set the example for other disciplines and often with more focus on what matters most: the health and safety of the patient and the public. Given the ongoing cry for demonstrated quality initiatives, perioperative nurses must become more sophisticated and collaborative in expanding the health care quality platform. This year, AORN has expanded our reach to other partners. We are working with the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology and with the International Association of Healthcare Central Service Materiel Management on new projects, such as sterilization standards, infection control issues, and sharps safety. We are stepping up the pressure to affect the delivery of care by promoting concepts that have always been at the heart of nursing: coordinated, patient-centered care and the engagement of patients and their family members in that care. These also are goals of the National Priorities Partnership, which nursing had a role in crafting, and more importantly, where we have a vital role in implementing and evaluating the outcomes.

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Now is the Time 

Perioperative nurses have a history of contributing meaningful solutions for quality improvement, establishing workplace standards, and setting standards and recommended practices for care of the surgical patient. Now is the time for every perioperative nurse to reach out to our colleagues in other clinical specialties to demonstrate our collaborative power and strength. Solidarity in nursing is essential. The more nurses are engaged and speaking with a united voice, the more influence nursing and its values will have on the health care system during the next decade. Nurses know what their patients want and need and, historically, have always responded to both. Nurses know that patients are the reason for their existence. Therein lies the power of nursing.