by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | March 27, 2014
From the March 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
This year, during our annual meeting, we will be taking six revised position statements to the House of Delegates for final approval and sign off. We’re very excited about this.
Personally, there are a number of areas that I’m particularly interested in, the first is advanced practice registered nurse practicing in the perioperative setting, which is consistent with the IOM report on nursing and nurses practicing to the full extent of their license. The second one is the perioperative registered nurse circulator dedicated to every patient undergoing surgical or other invasive procedures. The third deals with environmental responsibility for waste reduction and trying to conduct green efforts in the operating room. Another is the management of distraction and noise during perioperative patient care by portable communication devices and alarms. Many of our members voiced their concern about how these electronic devices were big distractions and were impacting patient care, so we wanted to come out with a position statement that they can refer to on this issue. We’ve also developed partnerships with international nursing organizations and I have done some traveling, lecturing and written an article that was distributed on the international level which has helped us spread our knowledge.
HCBN: What issues still need to be addressed that you hope the next president will tackle?
RS: I think that technology is definitely an issue. I think that improving online experience for our members by consolidating our education tools, webinars, our tool kits and other products that we have for implementing the recommended practices are important. We need to create more opportunity for nurses to strengthen their position at the executive level. We focused on this area as we developed the Center for Nursing Leadership and are conducting networking sessions in 10 cities across the United States twice a year. We created a product line to meet the needs of the patients and clinicians in the ambulatory surgery setting and now we need to assist the nurses to use the products and services. Another area of concern is that the perioperative nursing experience needs to be included for nursing students as an elective. We are working on strengthening the collaboration with nursing schools to help nurses understand perioperative practice and to select this specialty as their career.
I know the next president will also continue with the evidence rating RPs being developed and integrated into all the areas where invasive procedures are performed including ambulatory surgery, interventional radiology and physician offices.
