Nursing Standards?

Nurses General Nursing

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Can any one tell me what are the "ANA nursing standards"?

Why are they important?

And...on ANAs web. site,it says theses standards are a "MUST" for all nurses. Why are these standards a "MUST"?

Thank you

Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Check out the 2nd and 3rd post on this thread...that's why.

https://allnurses.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11784&highlight=New+Mexico+nurses+lawsuit

Also see:

The Nonnegotiable Nature of the ANA Code for Nurses with Interpretive Statements

http://nursingworld.org/readroom/position/ethics/etcode.htm

Code of Ethics for Nurses - Provisions

Approved as of June 30, 2001

http://www.nursingworld.org/ethics/chcode.htm

WHISTLEBLOWING AS A FAILURE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ETHIC

http://www.nursingworld.org/ojin/topic8/topic8_3.htm

You can also check out the sites of the California State Nurses Association, Maine Nurses Association, and Massachusetts State Nurses Association. All of these State associations have severed ties with the ANA. There is one more, but I can not remember who it is.

The ANA has a membership of less than 8% of all registered nurses in the U.S. They are not a legal body. With 92% of the nurses not supporting them, their standards can quickly be dismissed as recommendations and not standards that have to be adhered to unless your state board of nursing has officially incorporated them.

But I think you will find that the basic standards of care do not vary much from one state to the other.

Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.
The ANA has a membership of less than 8% of all registered nurses in the U.S. They are not a legal body. With 92% of the nurses not supporting them, their standards can quickly be dismissed as recommendations and not standards that have to be adhered to unless your state board of nursing has officially incorporated them.

CareerRN: I am appalled and angered by your statements. You are confusing two things: Union representation vs standards for the nursing PROFESSION.

The ANA for the past 100 years has been the standard bearer for our profession and raised the bar from nurses being trained to do a job, to a profession with a distinct body of knowledge.While many nurses may not be members due to financial reasons, they support the organizations mission and goals. Over 1 million people visit the ANA website http://www.nursingworld.org monthly, they must have some value or people wouldn't visit.

Have you ever read the standards, do you know what they are????

It is people like you who know nothing about supporting ourselves as professionals that are tearing apart nursing and are contributing to its demise.

These standards have been used in many instances over the past twenty years in supporting nurses efforts TO NURSE.

Did you check the links above --how it supported floor nurses and a charge nurse in a court case re whistleblowing re an incompetent doctor. Barry Adams used those same standards in his court case against the Massachusetts State Board of Nursing.

Flack jacket on now.

OK, lets get one thing straight off the bat. One million visits to or clicks on a to a web site does not actually mean one million separate people. Could be one hundred thousand people at ten visits a month or ten thousand people at one hundred visits a month, etc.

You can just add to me to the majority of bad nurses from California, Maine, Massachusetts, and all over the U.S. who do not recognize the ANA as their national leader. I think I am in great company.

Massachusetts is fresh to their new independence, they will get much stronger. California has been free for sometime and I think you would be hard pressed to find a nurse from that state, other than the minority who decided to keep in the ANA tradition when they broke ties, following the ANA doctrine.

Anyway you look at it, or try to skew the numbers, I belong to the majority of nurses in the U.S. and not an 8% minority.

I'm not touching the ANA part of the above discussion

Standards refer to guidelines for care. What is the standard of care for a .....(total hip replacement, MI, Chemotherapy, etc) in your facility? The ANA has a list of standards that you can buy but, what any nurse needs to know is what are the standards of care in their particular hospital.

For example, if you are taking care of a patient that has a Morphine drip, would you allow the nursing assistant to regulate the amount of Morphine that the patient gets? NO? Why not? Because your hospital says that an RN must do this. That is a standard.

In some hospitals it is the policy and procedure manual.

If you ever go to court the lawyer wants to know if the patient recieved the appropriate care according to the standards of care.

Remember that the laws vary from state to state on some topics.

Kat

The ANA subject was something I did not want to tackle as well, but once it was implied as a regulatory body that has minimal professional support. That false hood had to be clarified.

The state and individual hospital standards of care do take precedence in most situations and control our individual practices. The fact that there are states with boards of nursing out there who are not overtly influence through their state nursing associations/ ANA doctrine is factual.

It is also factual that the minority 8% of nurses in the U.S. actively supports the ANA. In fact, I bet a percentage of state association members, be it hopefully small, are not actually aware that they are actually ANA members and supporters with part of their dues going directly to the ANA.

I did a little reserch myself in regards to standards of care. the ANA standards of care are important and could be used to establish what a reasonable and prudent nurse would do in a particular situation and if a nurse did not act according to those standards then legal action could be taken.

Specializes in ER.

Karen, you know I love you more than my luggage.

But it seems to me that 8% of nurses agreeing that a reasonable and prudent nurse would do something does not constitute a standard that could be applied universally. Especially if hospital P&P goes another way and can support themselves with research.

I am a member of the ANA, and would not have it otherwise, but have to admit that although I think their views are important and for them most part I agree with them, I never thought that because the ANA says it is so that there might not be another equally correct viewpoint, especially concerning standards of care.

I have a question for you though..., I have not been able to get info from the MSNA or from the ANA website as to why Maine has disassociated from the parent body, or whether I will have to pay two fees next year. I noticed that the state is charging the same amount as last year:( Can you send me in the right direction on the ANA website to find out more? I'd really like to know the specifics of the separation.

Thank you.

Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Disaffiliation:

http://www.califnurses.org/cna/calnursemay01/mainleave.html

http://www.califnurses.org/pasnap/msnaltr.html

http://www.nursingworld.org/pressrel/2001/pr0429.htm

Info Maine/ANA

http://www.nursingworld.org/snas/me

From what I've wittnessed, the main reason Maine and Massachuestts nurses have left ANA was that the bedside nurses felt that neither association was fostering their cause and continuing to see worsening economic conditions.

In PA, 3 years ago their was a spilt off of union membership from the parent organization. Many of the bedside nurses wanted direct control over their collective bargaining activities and felt not enough finaces spent on staff nurse representation.

PA nurses without union representation felt that the cost of collective bargaining activites was so large, a disproporinate share was going to that and draining coffers; they had no need for representation as working in a non-unionized setting and that monies should be spent on practice and legislative issues.

My dues at that time were $450.00. and because of my work setting, didn't benefit from collective bargaining end directly (HOWEVER, I felt that this part of our dues WAS important to support nurses who were unable to influence workplace

conditions without union representation). My current dues are $270.00.

PNA- the collective bargaining union, had nurses leave and form other unions. In my area, PSNAP represents the majority of unionized hospital nurses. Exception is MCP which has kept PNA as union. PSNAP affiliated with CNA, Mass and Maine associations so only time will tell if they become a dominate nursing union. SEIU is active in the west and upstate PA.

My concern is that their focus is mostly on bedside nurses. Where does that leave the nurses who do not desire union representation, educators, insurance company nurses, doctors office and clinic nurses, administrators, etc? An organization is only as strong as the MEMBERs who participate in it.

When I went with members of PASNAP to Harrisburg to lobby for Mandatory Overtime protection, 200 nurses (some SEIU Members)out or over 5000 members participated....its the same everywhere in organizations less than 10% have active ongoing participation.

I believe that there are now 2 nurse associations in Maine. ANA-Maine ( I am a member) and Maine State Nurses Association. Both are actively working to improve staffing and we now have a law prohibiting mandatory overtime for nurses which is a direct result of the associations hard work.

CaronRN58

Specializes in ER.

Thanks guys, hopefully I can straighten out my questions.

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