From the Desk of the
President...
February 2007
I hope that this past holiday season,
finds you safe and healthy in 2007. With the New Year, most of us
make resolutions to make this year, a better year. Maryland ENA
started on our resolutions this past December when the president
elect, Mary Alice Vanhoy, the treasurer elect, Sandy Waak and I
attended a two-day ENA state leaders training in Chicago. We were
already excited about the up coming year, but this training had us
recharged, energized and focused for the next year. Learning and
sharing information between the state ENA leaders was very helpful
from a business viewpoint in running the association. We are looking
forward to enacting some aggressive goals to make MD ENA more
progressive. We plan to have our elections ballots and voting on
line. We have streamed line our meetings, moving officer/committee
reports via email. There is much more to come!
They call Maryland, “America in
miniature”, because “…topography runs the gamut from craggy forested
peaks of the Blue Ridge and Allegheny mountains, to an inexplicable
swamp teeming with growth normally found in the arctic, vast
riverside stretches overgrown with Cypress trees and Spanish Moss,
6,000 miles of jagged Chesapeake Bay shoreline, fertile farmland,
and sun bleached beaches along the Atlantic coast.” We have diverse
people, cultures and needs, yet as Emergency Nurses we have a single
focus, to make the lives we touch better. Our association is
dedicated to offering more courses to help you gain the tools you
need in your everyday practice. Knowledge is power, the power to
make a difference, make informed choices, to give your patients the
best care you can give.
This year you will see our association
has joined forces with EMS for our annual conference. We will hold
the conference at MITAGS near Baltimore. (Actually MITAGS is in
Linthicum Heights very near BWI airport and a centralized location.)
ENA by the Bay has been held there at least twice in the past, with
great success. This year attendees will be able to attend both the
nursing specific topics and EMS specific topics. With the Institute
of Medicine (IOM) reports addressing EMS and our emergency
departments, we have so much in common. It only makes sense to be
educated together. Following the main portion of the conference, we
will be holding an ENPC and TNCC instructor course. If you have been
identified as having instructor potential during your provider
courses, here is your opportunity to take the course and be an
instructor for future courses!
On the business side of the association,
we are restructuring our meeting format. We are interested in
starting a mentoring program for the meetings, to help ENA members
feel more comfortable when they attend the meetings. We are in the
process of updating our Standard Operating Procedures and hopefully,
between, work, family and having a life, we will have them posted on
the web site before 2008. One of the suggestions from the December
meeting was to have the committee chairs posted on the web site,
which we plan to do with their email address. This way, if you have
an interest in one of the committees i.e., fund raising, you can
contact that chairperson directly to offer your assistance. In the
mean time, please feel free to send it to me and I will forward it
to the appropriate committee chair. They will warmly welcome the
help!
A project that is special to me is the
student nurses. I came to you from North Carolina where I served on
the Board of the Student Nurses Association during 1999-2000. I then
returned annually to speak at their different conferences. (I missed
the last two years, because of the birth of my son!) The nursing
shortage affects us all. I want the new nurses that are coming
directly from nursing school to the emergency department (ED) to
have the benefit of our knowledge and the expertise that the
association can give to them. If we make the local chapter meetings
and conferences welcoming to them, than maybe they will enter and
remain in our field of emergency care. Every nurse that joins our
department, lessens the burdens that the shortage causes. We can
mentor these student nurses into the competent nurses that we are
proud to work shoulder to shoulder with. It is up to us to help
expand the ED nursing field and retain the nurses into which we
invest our time, money and energy.
A common problem I hear on a daily basis
is the issue of holding psychologically unstable patients in the ED!
I am sure we can all relate to the following stories.
A 25 bed ED was basically shut down for
over a week, holding 19 psych patients until appropriate inpatient
beds could be found.
What upsets me even more, is a story about another hospital and how
after 24 hours, if the psych patient’s therapist has not come to the
ED to evaluate the patient, he/she is discharged to the street!
These scenarios are true life and are
just not acceptable. Md. ENA addressed these issues with National
ENA who has heard our plea for help. When I asked for help writing a
position statement on this issue I discovered that it was a not just
Maryland’s issue, but a national problem. With the help of our
active Maryland members attending the national ENA board meetings,
the holding of psych patients has been identified as a focus of
national ENA. We will be writing and visiting our legislators on a
federal and state level, suggesting legislation to assist us in our
everyday care. I will be attending the government relations training
January 2007 in Arlington, VA. and I will still need your help and
support. Please let me know if you can help or would be interested
in joining our legislative push.
If you have an issue or an idea that
works well in your ED, please share it with us! We would like to
have a “Best Practice” posted on our web site for staff nurses or ED
managers to use. Maryland ENA wants to make your career and
emergency nursing practice the best it can be. Continuing education
is an ongoing path for successful practice.
Lead through example, whether you are a
staff nurse or vice president of nursing.
Be safe through these winter months!
Tamra White, RN
President Maryland Emergency Nurses Association
Past Messages:
March
2002
July
2002
September
2002
November
2002
December
2002
February
2003
September
2003
January
2004
April
2004
June
2004
November
2004
January
2005
March
2005
April
2005
May
2005
July
2005
March
2006
September/October
2006