Importance of Professional Associations in Nursing: ANA Analysis

This essay examines the American Nurses Association (ANA), a professional nursing association in the United States, founded in 1896 to improve nursing standards and promote nurses' welfare. The ANA represents millions of registered nurses and maintains high practice standards, advocates for nurses' rights, and influences healthcare issues. The essay details the ANA's mission, objectives, and benefits, including career advancement, networking, and professional development. It highlights the importance of professional associations in healthcare and explores how the ANA facilitates communication, provides educational resources, and supports evidence-based practice through research and continuing education. The ANA's role in adapting to changes in healthcare and promoting diversity within the profession is also discussed.

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Title: Importance of professional Associations in Nursing

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The American Nurses Association (ANA) is a professional nursing association for
registered nurses in the United States. This association was founded in 1896 with the purpose of
improving the nursing standards as well as promoting and improving nurse’s professional
welfare all over America. The association covers the 50 states in America but also includes
Puerto Rico, Virginia Islands and District of Columbia. There offices are located at 600
Maryland Ave. SW but they have local organizations and offices that carry out functions and
implementation of the association’s goals at the local level. According to Matthews (2012), this
association represents the interest of 3.1 million registered nurses in the United States. The ANA
maintains high standards for nursing practice, presents a realistic and positive picture of nursing,
promotes and maintains the nurses’ rights in and outside the work place and also influences
health care issues concerning the public and nurses. The ANA is made us of 54 constituent
associations coming from all over the state. It is made up of 5 divisions, with each being
managed by the Congress of Nursing Practice. Members of ANA to be members of any one or
more of these divisions. ANA, being one of the most know nurses’ association in this state, I
would like to explain how they achieved this. Therefore, this article aims at explaining the
functions and importance of ANA to its members. It also explains how the ANA has been able to
win the most number of registered nurses in US.
The mission of ANA is advancing the nursing profession so as improve the public health.
The nurses under this association work under a vision that requires them to function under a
powerful and united force by engaging their clients and fostering transformation in health and
health care. Among their objectives include, through targeted segmentation, to offer relevant
practices, services, policies and programs to the members, building and ensuring a strong
relationship between all nurses (American Nurses Association, 2011), leveraging data in the

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health care setting so that the nursing practice is innovation guided, come up with practices and
nurse based innovations on the best interest of the nurses and the patients, organize campaigns
aimed at improving the public and nurses’ health, provide education to registered members on
creating and maintaining a health nurse-patient relationship, partnering with other health care
stakeholders in providing awareness and increasing nurse-patient positioning and create more
awareness to the public on the value of nurses in improving and maintaining their (public) health
and well-being (Catallo, Spalding and Haghiri-Vijeh, 2014). This association has a lot of benefits
to its members. These include advancing their careers through attending webinars for free,
providing study modules, helping them become leaders in their fields through programs that
develop, build and impart leadership skills, help the nurses in networking through mentorship
programs, help the nurses stay updated by providing access to valuable professional tools and
listening to the cry of the nurses (ANA, 2011).
According to Benton (2012), professional associations are very important in creating and
maintaining the flow of ideas and the energy essential for maintaining health care practitioners
who fights and advocates for the needs of the patients and the public trust. To attain these, it is
important for the nurses to have networks. Professional networking is important for nurses as it
helps them find better jobs, help them in their career advancements, provides professional
support and helps in influencing health care systems. This association offers personal, strategic
and also operational networking to their members. According to American Nurses Association
(2015) events such as seminars are the largest platform for professional networking. They claim
that for each event, nurses attending should have some goals in mind to accomplish. The ANA
organize national conventions biennially in every even numbered year. The American Nursing
Association provides online professional networking platforms to her members.

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This association also has an organized system of communication that ensures information
reach every nurse and also ensures that every nurse is aware of their surroundings. The nurses
also network through social media as the association has availed electronic communication
devices to her members (Bureau of Health Professionals, 2011). The ANA uses bulleting alerts
and newsletters in keeping their members aware the happening and issues concerning health and
health care. With the increased technology and developments with the social media, they also use
phones, emails, social media networks such as Facebook and tweeter to ensure that information
reach the nurses. They also use these communication platforms to explain developments that
directly and indirectly influence the nurses, patients and the health care delivery.
Other than the regular communication the ANA has scholarly manuscripts relevant to
their members where they publish recent happenings and knowledge in a specialty area. They are
also publish books that help meet the needs of every nurse in the different professions (Bindon,
2017). To help nurses solve some pressing health care issues, the ANA in association with other
associations and companies allow nurses to access medical and other medical database and
literature review searches. So as to maintain an evidence based practice for their nurses, the
ANA encourages more research. This help the nurses to come up with theories, hypothesis, more
evidence and also structures studies and findings on how to offer quality health care.
The ANA are obligated to providing a continued education and professional development
for nurses. They attain this through managing changes, practice transitions, promoting scientific
inquiry and having collaborations with other professionals. Brunt and Morris (2019) claim that
the changes in the health care environment has also changed roles of health care professionals.
Health care is shifting from inpatient to outpatient settings and therefore rises the need to expand
the education and role of nurses to fit this transition. The ANA together with other associations

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are working to attain diversity in healthcare hence the need for more diverse nurses. The ANA
therefore helps their members to acquire and maintain the right knowledge and skills so as to
offer quality and skilled health care to their clients. Through the professional development and
education nurses are able to maintain competence in their profession as well as attain their
personal and professional goals (Moetsana-Poka, Lebaka and McCarthy, 2014).

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References
American Nurses Association. (2011). Nursing's social policy statement: The essence of the
profession (3rd ed.). Silver Spring, MD: Nursebooks.org.
Bureau of Health Professions. (2011). The registered nurse population: Findings from the 2008
National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses. Retrieved from
http://bhpr.hrsa.gov/healthworkforce/rnsurvey2008.html.
Bindon, S. L. (2017). Professional development strategies to enhance nurses’ knowledge and
maintain safe practice. The Elsevier, Vol. 106, No. 2. Pp. 99-110. Doi:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aorn.2017.06.002
Benton, D. (2012). Advocating globally to shape policy and strengthening nursing influence. The
OJIN, Vol. 17. No. 1. Pp. 5.
Brunt, B. A. and Morris, M. M. (2019). Nursing professional development. The NCBI:
StatPearls Publishing LLC.
Catallo, C., Spalding, K. and Haghiri-Vijeh, R. (2014). Nursing Professional Organizations:
What Are They Doing to Engage Nurses in Health Policy? The SAGE, Vol. 9. No. 1.
DOI: 10.1177/2158244014560534
Moetsana-Poka, F., Lebaka, M., & McCarthy, C. F. (2014). Developing a Continuing
Professional Development Program to Improve Nursing Practice in Lesotho. African
journal of midwifery and women's health, 8(Suppl 2), 10–13.
Matthews, J. N. (2012). Role of Professional Organizations in Advocating for the Nursing
Profession. The OJIN, Vol. 17, No. 1. Doi: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol17No01Man03