President's Message

Alabama Nurse, Dec 2003-Feb 2004 by Flowers, Juanzetta

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...g Task Force

At the Convention in September, the House of Delegates voted to establish a Task Force to look at the entire organization of ASNA with the idea of restructuring it to make it more in line with the needs of the nurses in Alabama. Ruth Harrell, the immediate past president, chairs the Task Force. She is joined by committee members, Billie Ward, Charlotte Wynn, Debbie Kirk, Eula Das, Janet Donoghue, Jill Stokley, Juanzetta Flowers and Helen Wilson.

This group is visiting with each District to hold a forum to receive feedback from the members on how the new and improved ASNA should look. Their first report is due to the Board of Directors by the January 2004 Board meeting. However, we would also like feedback from anyone who has some ideas for us. If you cannot attend the forum in your area, please feel free to call or e-mail Helen Wilson at the ASNA office with your ideas. We want as much input as possible.

Problem or solution?

An ongoing problem for nursing in Alabama, and indeed all around the country, is the problem of new graduates being made to feel unwelcome to the profession. They seem to come out of school ready to enter into their chosen profession with eagerness, only to find that they are not considered an asset in their workplace.

Ask yourself if you have ever said something disdainful to a new graduate on your unit or outpatient setting. Or, have you tried to remember how frightened you were yourself in your very first work setting and tried to be as calm and helpful as possible to that new nurse. If you have done the first, you are the problem and if you have done the second act, you are the solution.

Mentoring is one solution to the problems of the "new graduate syndrome." That syndrome includes lack of experience, fright, insecurity, and overall frustrations with learning the ins and outs of a new job. A mentor is a role model, a teacher, a coach, a person who shows by doing, but most importantly a mentor is encouraging and compassionate toward the mentoree. Mentoring is about you, the experienced nurse, sharing your expertise with a new nurse so that she/he might develop and fine tune the desired attributes of an experienced nurse.

Mentoring is a committed partnership and it does take time and effort, but it can be so very rewarding for those involved. Consider being part of the solution by mentoring a new nurse.

Another problem that is surfacing more and more in the nursing profession is burn out. Burn out is not just occurring in the nurse who has worked 20 years anymore. Now it is not at all unusual for new graduates to change to another career in as few as five years past graduation. Their cited reason often is that they no longer want to be around the negative nurses with whom they have to work.

While it is true that the days of calm and "downtime" seems to have disappeared from all work settings, hospitals or schools or outpatient settings, taking your frustrations out on the new person seems to me to insure that you will be running off the very person who could be your salvation. We are all working harder and longer than I can ever remember in the past. The major solution to this is to have more nurses/patient ratio. To do that, we not only need to entice more people into the profession, but we need to be sure we keep them there once we have them.

So, ask yourself if you want to be part of the problem or the solution. I hope you will all elect the solution route. It is the least we can do for our profession.

The Purpose of ASNA

For as long as I have been a member of ASNA, I have heard over and over from non-members that they don't know what ASNA could do for them. They can see no return for the money they put out in dues. My answer is that ASNA is the home of my professionalism. It is the only organization in the state that continually works to make the profession of nursing the most viable and valued health profession in the state.

ASNA is a generalist organization that represents every professional nurse, irrespective of the specialty or setting in which that nurse works. It monitors the media, the Legislature and the public to be sure that all nurses are being treated fairly. No other nursing organization is that broadly applied. This may not seem like much to you, but I challenge you to try to do all of that yourself. I think you would find it impossible to monitor the 3,000-4,000 bills that are introduced into the Legislature each year to be sure some aspect of any one of them would not impact your practice. You may notice an article in a news medium that casts a disparaging light on nursing, but you as one person can you really do anything about it? ASNA can and does.

For instance, a well-meaning physician recently wanted to impress the public with the idea of the nurses that would work in a new setting in his community. His statement that his nurses could not only take care of patients, they could mop the floors as well. Such a statement seems innocuous on the surface, but what image does it leave in your mind when you hear it. It should not be left unchallenged because nursing has worked too long and much too hard to overcome just the idea that represents.