A year of promoting the perioperative nursing profession

Paula R. Graling, RN Follow the Leader Be action-oriented, goal-driven, politically astute, tenacious, articulate, scientific, compassionate, resourceful, creative, visionary, heroic. Roll up your sleeves and get the job done. Challenge the status quo. Refuse to be intimidated. Dare to stand in the line of fire. Boldly go where no nurse has gone before. Lead.1 In preparing to write my final message to you as your President, I struggled with what to write and thought about my role as your leader. Are the qualities listed in the poem what it takes to hold a leadership role within AORN or to be the AORN President? How do we continue to develop our members to assume leadership roles and prepare them to conduct not only the business of the Association but to lead the practice of our profession? During my speech at Congress last March, I shared my views of an AORN dream and talked about working together to fulfill that dream by decreasing the anonymity of perioperative nurses and the transparency of our role to those outside of health care. I have traveled across the country talking with you about how we are anonymous in our successes, yet famous in our failures. You have risen to the challenge of decreasing our anonymity, and you have reaffirmed for me that most of us became nurses because of our inherent compassion for people and our desire to be part of a profession that values life and wants to help patients overcome serious illness and injury. We are experts at what we do; now we just need to be better at telling our own story and reminding those who tend to forget about us. I have emphasized my Presidential theme of “Promoting Our Practice, Protecting Our Patient, and Preserving Our Future” in my President's Messages throughout the year. In May, I spoke to you about the power of promoting practice through grassroots advocacy, bringing the voice of perioperative nursing and the knowledge of nursing, health care, and patient safety to the public policy arena. Perioperative nurses have the passion and commitment to make health care safer and better and the desire to preserve and promote the profession. In June, I examined strategies to mentor new students, new employees, and new AORN members. Without the growth of these three important groups, we will be unable to preserve the future of our profession. July was focused on patient safety using an analogy between the invisible force of the perioperative nursing workforce and the very visible safety patrol force we see at school bus crossings every day. Wouldn't it be a nice accomplishment if, in the future, our surgical patients could identify the perioperative nurse as a beacon of safety as readily as an elementary school student can identify the school safety patrol? July also marked the release of our first Journal supplement, Lessons Learned from Close Calls in the OR. This supplement is a terrific example of partnership between industry and AORN to promote patient safety initiatives. October's message also was safety focused in conjunction with the release of AORN's Fire Safety Tool Kit. Imagine the look of surprise on the faces of US postal workers as they delivered thousands of triangular boxes to the doorsteps of hospitals. This collaborative tool kit was a perfect example of a resource to address multidisciplinary safety needs in the clinical setting and in the community. In August and September, I focused on recognizing excellence in members and sharing knowledge as a subject matter expert. I truly believe that you, the grassroots members, do not give yourselves enough credit for what you do every day for this Association. As I said in my Presidential address, AORN is much more than a building in Denver. It is a collection of members who utilize their expertise to strive for best practice and work to collectively uphold the standards of our profession. Perioperative Nurse Week came in November, reiterating the desire to dispel our anonymity with the theme “We're There for Safe Care.” Displaying the Perioperative Nurse Week logo—a simple icon of a perioperative nurse—gave us the opportunity to educate others about the diverse roles we perform and reinforced our goals of increasing our visibility and promoting our profession. It allowed us to reflect on the value we bring to the perioperative team and the integral role we play in patient and workplace safety. Finally, in the winter months, my topics of promoting our own gifts and our passion for the practice of perioperative nursing were tributes to our attempts to make a personal mark in the health care arena. Because of our dedication, we are becoming less anonymous, but we must not become complacent. There is still much work to do. As my Presidential year comes to a close, I would like to thank all of you with whom I have had the opportunity to work and who have made this year a wonderful experience. We have had unique opportunities to showcase the value of perioperative nurses to patient outcomes. We have held several summit meetings at Headquarters during which we looked at ways to enhance the AORN Foundation, the Journal, the Recommended Practices, and the Perioperative Nursing Data Set. We have forged an alliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to promote workplace safety, developed a partnership with the US Pharmacopeia to tackle medication safety initiatives, and taken part in a public launch of the Surgical Care Improvement Project (ie, SCIP). We continue to work on ambulatory quality indicators and leadership development. We are not a static Association; we are responding to what perioperative nurses need by providing resources that allow you to give optimal care to your patients no matter where you choose to practice. Nothing is so contagious as example, and our every really good or bad action inspires a similar one.2 I ask you: what do we do to promote our Association to those colleagues who work beside us and do not reap the benefits of being an AORN member? Is our Association also anonymous in its success within our profession? Does AORN do such a good job of representing the profession of perioperative nursing that every perioperative nurse does not feel the need to be a member? What can you do to promote our Association to others who work right beside you? Sometimes all you have to do is ask, and sometimes all you have to do is be the example. Please join me in being the example. It has been an honor to serve you as your President for the past year.