Faculty of Health - RNAO Meeting and Professionalism Summary

This report summarizes a student's experience attending a Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) meeting as part of a nursing course. The student attended the meeting to gain insight into the RNAO's role in shaping healthcare policy and promoting nursing professionalism. The summary details the attendees, including members, stakeholders, and representatives from the Ministry of Health, and the issues discussed, such as the healthcare challenges of First Nations peoples and the impact of replacing registered nurses with less qualified workers. The report highlights the RNAO's Best Practice Guidelines (BPG), their implementation process, and the facilitators and barriers involved. The student reflects on the meeting's impact, emphasizing the collaborative efforts of nursing leaders and the inspiration gained to grow as a nurse. The report also references the RNAO's toolkit for implementing BPGs and the importance of stakeholder engagement for successful implementation. The student found the experience inspiring and motivating for their future career in nursing.

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Outcome of RNAO Meeting
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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The RNAO or Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario is a professional association
situated in Ontario, Canada, consisting of registered nurses and nurse practitioners along with
nursing students. The aim of RNAO Board meeting is to cover areas like public health policy,
promoting the excellence of nursing practice, increasing their contribution in shaping the
healthcare system and influencing decisions which affect nurses and the people they
serve(Abdullah et al, 2018). RNAO provides standards and practice guidelines for nurses to
provide safe, non-judgemental, compassionate and ethical care, preserving their dignity,
maintaining their privacy and confidentiality(Antunes et al, 2018).
The stakeholders of the RNAO meeting include groups or individuals who are directly
or indirectly affected by the implementation of Best Practice Guidelines(BPG). They ensure
that the knowledge which is adapted is both evidence based and modified appropriately to the
settings. Internal stakeholders include staff nurses,nursing specialist and physicians, patients
and families, external stakeholders are RNAO or other accreditation bodies and interface
stakeholders include board members and staffs having cross appointments. The RNAO
meeting was attended by its members and stakeholders, including the Ministry of Health,
Political leaders, Provincial Chief Nursing Officer, other MPPs, CEOs and CNOs.
The issues which were addressed in the meeting include the unsolved tragedy
regarding the health, social condition and economic circumstances of First Nations peoples in
Canada, along with issues arising in the health care and nursing settings owing to
replacement of Registered Nurse with less qualified health workers, which has resulted in
reduced patient safety and privacy.
RNAO provides a strong and reliable base for the nursing profession to influence and
promote healthy public policy. Various types of meetings are conducted such as annual
general meeting, professional meeting, educational fair or webinar.The professional meeting

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provided me an opportunity for the nurses to share their nursing interventions and ideas in
various health-related topics from over the world, and also served as a platform for an open
dialogue among the best minds of nursing research along with the education, practices, and
policies for promoting and enhancing nursing skills and knowledge. Oral and poster
presentations were also included, which gave a better understanding and clarity of thoughts.
In the meeting, BPG(Best practice guidelines) implemented by RNAO was also discussed.
The guidelines provides nurses with various tools for clinical practice which promotes their
knowledge level and help them in clinical decision making, it also reduce cost and variation
in patient care. Lectures were given oh how to identify, review and select knowledge and
adapt them to local contexts such as stakeholders or resources.
RNAO also brought professionalism to Canadian nursing by implementing certain
strategies for efficient and enhanced patient care(French & Emed, 2018). They engage with
the Registered nurses, nurse practitioners along with the student nurses for stimulating
membership and promoting the value of belongings to their professional organization. They
spoke about the emerging health issues that impact the nurses along with the nursing
profession, increased nurses' contribution to the healthcare system by facilitating their
engagement(Mitchell & Murray, 2016). Now nurses are more vocal about their needs and
have the choice to decide a particular health strategy on their own.
The RNAO toolkit provides a framework helps to identify and understand a specific
problem, and review the evidences that supports the identified issue by selecting a high
quality guideline which also address the identified problem. Then a gap analysis is performed
by the BPG implementation team by measuring the evidence to practice gap. The gap
analysis helps to understand whether the recent evidence based practices are being supports
by the BPG, then it can be implemented further to reinforce practice strength. Gap analysis
also helps in identifying the practices which are not completely met. Once the gap analysis is

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completed successfully, smarter goals and objectives are identified based on priority. The
knowledge which is gathered is further implemented to fit local context. Engagement of the
stakeholders is crucial for increasing support or influence and also helps to ensure that the
knowledge which is adapted is both evidence based and custom-made according to the
situations. This is followed by implication of available recources such as access to internet or
library services which will help the implementation team in the recovery of clinical practice
guidelines along with their critical appraisal. However, there are some barriers and facilitators
towards successful implementation of the plan. The facilitators help in promoting the
implementation plan, intensifying its sope while the barriers interfers with the same. So it is
very important to assess the barriers and facilatators, and implement strategies to reduce the
number of barriers and capitalize on the facilitators. Next comes the implementation of plans,
which requires sufficient support of the satkeholders and the multidisciplinary implantation
team for developing strategies for successful excetution of the plan overcoming the barriers
such as education interventions, conduction of regular audits and providing feedbacks
motivates the heath professionals.
In conclusion, I would like to say that I had an amazing experience at the RNAO
meeting. Through the meeting, I was able to witness how nursing leaders collaborate to
address issues in the healthcare system. I also gained better insight into the RNAO as an
organization and what benefits it provides to its members. I am grateful for this opportunity
provided to me, which helped me in discussing work and careers with experienced nurses and
staff members. I felt more inspired and motivated to grow as a nurse.

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REFERENCE
Abdullah, G., Higuchi, K. A., Ploeg, J., & Stacey, D. (2018). Mentoring as a Knowledge
Translation Intervention for Implementing Nursing Practice Guidelines: A Qualitative
Study. International journal of nursing education scholarship, 15(1).
Antunes, V., Valentim, O., Pereira, F., Frade, F., Firmino, C., Marques, J., ... & Sousa, L.
(2018). RNAO’S best practice guidelines in the nursing curriculum.
French, S. E., & Emed, J. D. (2018). Nursing in Canada. In Nursing and Globalization in the
Americas (pp. 225-274). Routledge.
Mitchell, D. M., & Murray, M. (2016). RE: RNAO submission on personal emergency leave.