Importance of Professional Associations in Nursing
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Importance of Professional Associations in Nursing
American Nurses Association (ANA)
The American Nurses Association (ANA), formally known as The Nurses’ Associated Alumnae, was started in 1896 in New York City. The association began serving the U.S as well as Canada.
The Vision, Purpose, and Mission of the ANA
The mission of ANA of establishing standards in nursing practice that will promote the rights of nurses in the workplace, advancing their financial and general wellbeing. The American Nurses’ Association’s mission ensures nurses work while united and as a dominant force in transforming healthcare, health, and when engaging with clients. The primary purpose of this professional organization is to empower nurses in promoting change.
Working as a clinical nurse, I have come to see the many advantages that are associated with professional association with nurses. They are based on the kind of tasks they perform daily. To begin with, being a member of ANA gives clinical nurses with a competitive advantage. ANA educates nurses on professionalism standards in their place of work, ethics, and the principles that are set for the practices of nurses. Work ethics are actions such as integrity, honesty, respect, commitment, and responsibility, among other moral, ethical values important for nurses.
The second benefit of ANA is the provision of a career opportunity. In my career as a clinical nurse, the professional association provides me with added knowledge by introducing nurses with advanced masters and degree programs in nursing, for example, APRN and BSN. Advanced learning opens more job opportunities for nurses and provides nurses with a good experience. Mostly, developing a nursing career opportunity gives nurses a chance of serving their patients better.
Thirdly, ANA provides nurses with training, and the field of nursing keeps on changing. Some of the changes in the nursing field are technological advancements, nursing models, skills, and techniques to respond to disasters and theories that are forthcoming. ANA provides nurses with up-to-date, informed skills; thus, they can improve in service delivery to patients. Lastly, members of ANA I general benefits in networks, grants, advocates, professionalism, socialization and many more
Networking Opportunities for nurses
Members in ANA get a chance to network by attending trips, seminars, conferences, and other nursing professional forums that bring together different nurses with different experiences and classes together. These networking opportunities connect nurses with health facilities and some new friends. Networking provides nurses with a better understanding of the current trends in the field of nursing. A second advantage that networking brings to clinical nurses is connections to like-minded colleagues. Links created helps nurses get job opportunities as friends usually assist each other in directing them to organizations that may be having job openings. Most fundamentally, networking helps nurses in embracing diversity as in the meetings and conferences of this type entails different individuals from various ethnic backgrounds, with different beliefs and from different races meet to deliberate on issues about nursing. Through embracing diversity, the services provided by a nurse improves as it brings an end to discrimination, racism, stereotyping, and other biases.
How the professional associations keep members informed
The American Nurses’ Association always reports to its members through the provision of time-to-time training. Information is delivered through online resources, statistics, and printed ones. Similarly, open forums, benchmarks, and conferences assist, and parameters assist in noticing the differences between advanced firms. For example, advancements in technology such as medical informatics are imparted to clinical nurses. In clinical nursing, matters in evidence-based research are trained every time, and besides, practical lessons are provided. Moreover, techniques in disaster response are taught each time there is a change in them. In nursing, policies, working standards, education, and medicine change now and then.
Opportunities for continuing education and professional development
The American Nurses’ Professional Association provides clinical nurses with various opportunities to advance on their careers by providing them with programs of higher education. ANA offers a program in the advancement of degrees, diplomas, Ph.D., and Masters, although they involve nurses having different qualifications to be eligible in joining. These programs in levels of education aim at providing nurses with the encouragement of specializing in various specialized fields. Such standards of education programs aimed at encouraging nurses to specialize in specialized areas. Nurses manage to become clinicians, dentists, nurse-counselors, surgeons, among other numerous doctors. Programs like ADN, DNP, LPN, MSN, and BSN are among the advanced nursing programs offered to assist nurses in growing their careers.
In conclusion, nursing is a severe profession that requires nurses to fit in several professional associations. These associations give opportunities for networking, competitive advantage, professionalism, training, career development, and other benefits. They also open a new door for working opportunities. The most crucial mission on ANA is to endorse safe and quality health services by enhancing work ethics and working standards that are of high level. ANA also considers the future of nursing and thus they keep their members informed
References
Rockman, I. F. (2019). Promoting professional development: A local approach. College & research libraries news, 50(10), 902-904.
Harper, M. G., & Maloney, P. (Eds.). (2016). Nursing professional development: Scope and standards of practice. Association for Nursing Professional Development.
Black, B. (2017). Professional nursing: Concepts & challenges (YH Yum et al., Trans.).
Finkelman, A. (2017). Professional nursing concepts: Competencies for quality leadership. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Tluczek, A., Twal, M. E., Beamer, L. C., Burton, C. W., Darmofal, L., Kracun, M., … & Turner, M. (2019). How the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics informs genetic/genomic nursing. Nursing Ethics, 26(5), 1505-1517.