I invite you all to take a moment to reflect on the day or the events that led to your decision to become a nurse.
Now think about those who have gone before you, your mentors and your colleagues, who were a part of your journey and helped get you to where you are today.
Now, ask yourself: Are you where you want to be?
Whether you have been a nurse for less than a year or for more than 40, you have without a doubt invested a lot of time, hard work, and energy into your career. If you know NAON, you know that it is a valuable resource for knowledge, education, and networking. If you are engaged with NAON, then you've felt the weight of its returns and of the responsibility that comes with the knowledge and connections made here.
Although it took all of that time and energy to get here, there is also no doubt that it has taken as much, if not more, to stay here. We've felt the weight that serving in this profession brings, especially during the pandemic. I don't know about you, but when I first set forth on my journey to become a nurse and a nurse practitioner, I knew that there would be challenges and bumps in the road, but I never could have imagined the impasse and destruction that the pandemic has created.
Did you know that the World Health Organization had plans to declare 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and Midwife? Little did they know how the nursing profession would quickly become among the most essential and that nurses would be revered as heroes during the public health crisis. Healthcare professionals like you felt the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic harder and for longer than any other and continue to drown in the sequelae of other socioeconomic crises in our communities such as unemployment, environmental disasters, social justice movements, and financial catastrophes (Chan et al., 2021).
Prior to the pandemic we were already facing nursing shortages because of the lack of educators, burnout due to the high demands of the aging population, retirement amongst our aging workforce, and migration away from the profession altogether (Haddad et al., 2023). It changed the way our newer nurses received education and further threatened already compromised recruitment and retention rates of nurses (National Academy of Medicine, 2021). As the pandemic recedes, it all may seem now as if the problems exist only in our rearview. And from the rearview vantage point, it's hard to unsee the devastation and chaos left behind. In fact, it's all too easy to focus on the wreckage and its impact on nursing-whether it be furloughs, layoffs, or turnover and the ever-deteriorating staffing crisis that we see every day. Orthopaedic nurses were more specifically impacted when many nonurgent and elective cases were halted. As our intensive care units and critical care floors filled beyond capacity with the sickest patients, the otherwise empty orthopaedic and med-surg floors became the new homes to step-down and respiratory patients. Like many other specialty nurses, orthopaedic nurses were rapidly deployed from all areas across the care continuum and quickly learned how to be COVID nurses.
The nursing workforce issues coupled with the financial implications of the pandemic on our healthcare system and organizations have also severely impacted our very own organization, NAON. In early prepandemic 2020, NAON was more than 5,200 members strong with robust networking and educational programs including an annual in person Congress. Since 2020, our membership has been on a steady decline with a 55% reduction as of this date. NAON has a firm foundation with a rich history that has contributed greatly to its mission to "advance the specialty of orthopaedic nursing." But quite frankly, NAON is wounded. We are not where we want to be or need to be. It's not just about the numbers of members or the number of attendees at Congress. It's about the weight of our organization, the impact that it can make. I believe that there is work to be done.
The National Academy of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have conducted studies and built committees focused on a path forward to health equity by way of strengthening the capacity and expertise of nurses. NAON plays an essential role in this solution for the global nursing workforce problem. First, we must focus on our purpose and our mission to advance our orthopaedic specialty. Do you or your colleagues need more education? Do you want to contribute and provide new knowledge through research or publication? Are you applying best practices in your setting and empowering those around you to do the same? Are you engaged with NAON to seek more information and opportunities to grow yourself professionally? Are you connected with your colleagues locally and afar to share and gain wisdom in the spirit of collaboration?
We all have our reasons for why we entered the nursing profession. We all have different journeys that brought us to orthopaedic nursing and to NAON. Our purpose and those reasons enable us to each make a difference in our own way. As my pastor likes to say, "show me your why, and I'll show you your way!" Teach, mentor, include, engage, write, participate, energize, and empower yourself and your colleagues. We need you, and I urge you to shift your focus from the rearview and to the road ahead. A simple shift in perspective lends to a momentary sense of relief and gives birth to hope for better numbers, bigger impact, and more weight! So, let's go, we're better together!
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