The American Nurses Association (ANA) of Silver Spring, MD and the International Transplant Nurses Society (ITNS) of Pittsburgh, PA have announced the release of Transplant Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice. This new volume serves as a reference that the ANA says "identifies and defines expectations for the role and practice of the transplant nurse."

Transplant nursing involves care for both recipients and living donors of solid organs. The specialized practice focuses on protecting, promoting, and optimizing the health of transplant recipients and the living donors across the life span. The field also includes protection, promotion, and optimization of the deceased organ donor during donation, and providing care to recipients' families.

The ITNS convened a panel of nurse experts to develop the guide through assessing and analyzing transplant nursing and then accurately describe and delineate the practice. Carol J. Bickford, PhD, RN-BC, Senior Policy Fellow, Department of Nursing Practice and Policy of the ANA spoke to DOTmed about the scope and standards and its use for nurses. Dr. Bickford said the collection was created through the group effort of the ITNS in drafting the guide, and the ANA handling editing and publishing.

The ANA's strong recognition program for nursing specialties was the impetus to create this document. Bickford explained, "One of the ANA's professional responsibilities is to help to provide safety to the consumer, so that they have confidence that there is some recognition mechanism for nurses to say they are this type of nurse, and they are competent. As a result of this recognition program, there is very specific material that has to be presented for the ANA's review process--a peer level review process." As this specialty has been around for a long time, and has collected a body of knowledge and a sufficient number of people in the practice, Bickford says the time had come to move forward with a request for nursing specialty recognition that required submission of the specialty's scope and standards of practice.

Bickford articulated that the Transplant Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice "defines the scope of practice, and establishes the standards of practice and professional performance so people know who they are. The health care consumer can actually take a look at the material as well and be able to evaluate or appreciate a nurse who is doing transplant nursing." The transplant nurse uses this document when completing a self assessment for readiness to take the specialty certification.