The ANA Code of Ethics Application in AORN

Type: Essay

Subject: Nursing Leadership Course

Subject area: Nursing

Education Level: Undergraduate

Length: 5 pages

Referencing style: APA

Preferred English: US English

Spacing Option: Double

Title: Professional Association

Instructions: research a professional nursing association/organization that is relevant to your practice or professional role. the professional association that i have chosen is the association of perioperative registered nurses.

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Also Read: Best Nursing Essay Writing Help  

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Focus: the professional association that i have chosen is the association of perioperative registered nurses.

Important notes: reason why i selected this professional association: having worked in peri-operative services for 12 years provided me with the skills necessary to work in my current department, urology, these last 14 years.

The ANA Code of Ethics Application in AORN

Student Name

Institutional Affiliation

The ANA Code of Ethics Application in AORN

Introduction to AORN

The professional association that I have chosen is the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses (AORN). AORN was established in 1949 with a current membership of about 37,996 (Bacon & Stewart, 2017). The main goal of AORN was to create a countrywide community for all operating room nurses to share the most effective practices for patients going through different surgical procedures. AORN's purpose is to empower and unite other health organizations, industry partners, and perioperative nurses to join hands for safer surgical procedures for all patients, all the time. 

AORN's Mission

To advocate for staff and patients’ safety in perioperative nursing care.

AORN's Vision

AORN aims at establishing perioperative nursing care with excellent standards by offering evidence-based resources.

AORN’s Values

AORN upholds specific values that have helped the organization to achieve its vision. Firstly, AORN honor members' contribution through the values of inclusiveness, diversity, and equity (Safety, 2021). Secondly, AORN promotes the value of innovation through rewarding creativity, risk-taking, or exemplary results. Thirdly, AORN values good communication that is evidenced through honest, respective, and open dialogue between members. The organization also supports the value of quality through accountability, reliability, and timeliness. Most importantly, AORN values achievement through supporting growth and excellence. I selected AORN since I have been a member for 12 years but ceased after the career field change. I am now working with the urology departments. AORN does not have members' specialty certification but strongly believes in credentialing. AORN can be accessed on https://www.aorn.org/about-aorn. 

ANA Code of Ethics Provision 1 and AORN

AORN has struggled to advocate for and support diversity and inclusion in line with ANA Code of Ethics provision 1 that governs nurses' profession. ANA Code of Ethics helps set standard ways of conduct in the nursing profession (Tluczek, 2019). Firstly, AORN has been advocating for diversity and inclusion among the increasingly diverse patient population by supporting the perioperative workforce's employment with multicultural understanding. Diversity in healthcare has become a major concern for many caregivers. Therefore, AORN has noticed an urgent need for recruiting nurses with diverse cultural backgrounds who can relate well with patients from different cultural backgrounds. Culture is a major determinant of care quality, hence a need for care providers to have extensive knowledge of handling patients with cultures different from those of nurses. For example, a patient could have come from a vegetarian family, yet a nurse recommended meat-based treatments after surgery. In this case, conflict of interest can arise, thus compromising care quality and ignoring diversity. However, such scenarios are on the decline due to the increased AORN's campaign for nurses with diverse cultural backgrounds. 

Secondly, AORN has supported and advocated for diversity and inclusion by championing improved communication between caregivers and patients by breaking language barriers. Good communication is one of the association's key values. Therefore, AORN has continuously advocated for nurses who can understand language among the native patients. For example, AORN supports that there should be a nurse during every surgical procedure and after surgery treatment who can comfortably interpret a patient's language. As such, it would be easier to tell if a patient is responding effectively to drugs or other types of therapies after surgery.

AORN has also focused on advocating for the equitable distribution of resources in healthcare. Minorities have been suffering from inequitable sharing of resources. For example, access to quality care is a major concern in the US, such that some races do not get covered when accessing health care services such as surgery. However, AORN has fought to ensure that patients from all races are treated equally during and after surgery in support of provision 1 of the ANA Code of Ethics.

ANA Code of Ethics Provision 4

AORN plays a major role in cultivating leadership and accountability among the members. Leadership and management are significant factors that influence patients' outcomes. Accountability among nurses is one of the requirements by provision 4 of the ANA Code of Ethics. On the other hand, AORN has made accountability a major value that everyone should uphold within the association and when carrying out their respective duties in nursing care. The association upholds that all perioperative nurses and other caregivers are expected to act to show excellent management and leadership skills in care provision. According to Schmidt (2017), all nurses are supposed to bear the consequences of their actions. AORN maintains that all perioperative registered nurses are accountable and responsible for their professional or unprofessional practice to health care organizations, themselves, the perioperative team, and patients. For example, if a patient suffers from preventable post-surgery complications due to a nurse's negligence, disciplinary should be taken on the team. AORN also states that a perioperative team should be responsible for its actions, whether good or bad. It should be applauded if the team gets outstanding results, such as facilitating a complex surgical procedure.

On the other hand, AORN promotes leadership among the members through awards. AORN always ensures that any outstanding patient outcome is acknowledged and awarded. Consequently, nurses have become more motivated in discharging nursing care. 

Healthcare Legislation and Policy

AORN is involved in the formulation of health policy annually. The association's board of directors is involved in the establishment of health policy agendas. AORN establishes policies following recommendations from the National Legislative Forum. Then the Government Affairs pursues the established policy to ensure that the health policies proposed have been implemented through the legislative and other regulatory arenas countrywide. Examples of the current policy agendas include health equality, safe care delivery, and surgical smoke evacuation. Besides, the AORN team collaborates with decision-makers, organizations, and colleagues to advance health care improvements and patient safety by formulating better policies in all operative settings.

Professional Advocacy

Nursing professional bodies play an important role in the advancement and advocacy of the nursing profession. Advocacy is considered an important aspect of ethics in the nursing profession (Abbasinia, Ahmadi, & Kazemnejad, 2020). AORN has greatly contributed to the advancement of the nursing profession. In particular, AORN has helped in improving professionalism in the nursing field. For example, the AORN association has shown dedication towards enhancing professionalism among the perioperative registered nurses (RNs). Consequently, nurses have improved the quality of care, hence leading to more positive patients’ outcomes. AORN has also promoted the nursing profession by promoting the standards of nursing practices, especially among the perioperative nurses. As a result, society's perception toward nurses has changed positively and, in turn, changed how people viewed the nursing profession. Society used to view nursing as a profession full of unprofessionalism and substandard care services. However, AORN has changed the negative attitude held by society through improved standards and professionalism.

Achieving Meaningful Inclusion and Diversity in The Nursing Profession

The United States is increasingly experiencing diversity in the nursing workforce and patients’ population. According to Grissom (2018), diversity and inclusion in the workplace is a hot topic globally. For example, the nursing profession in the US does not have a balanced demographic composition, especially among the ethnic minorities (Cary Jr et al., 2020).  The diversity has also led to demand for inclusion in the workplaces to ensure that nurses and patients feel valued. Diversity in the patients' population could be due to race, education, culture, gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. 

Diversity is important in the nursing field because it promotes the provision of quality care to patients. Diversity recognition among nurses helps promote nursing care by ensuring that care delivery considers all important aspects that could hinder effective care administration. For example, culture is a diverse aspect that can hinder or promote care delivery in a diverse patient population. For instance, a patient whose culture does not allow handshakes could consider it inappropriate when a nurse extends hands to get a handshake. 

Diversity also helps in breaking communication barriers in nursing. The language barrier has been associated with increased cases of misdiagnosis. However, diversity has helped develop ways such as employing nurses from different ethnic backgrounds to assist in language translation. Consequently, patients have become more comfortable in communicating with the nurses. Thus, patients can now give their medical history clearer, enabling nurses to offer better treatment procedures. 

On the other hand, inclusion in the nursing field implies that caregivers are parts of all characteristics of patient care that relate to the scope of their practice. Inclusion is important because it allows nurses to get equal treatment. As a result, nurses have become more motivated to discharge their respective duties. 

AORN has also supported diversity inclusion in the nursing field. For example, the perioperative team shows diversity by respecting the ideas of all members and non-members in the healthcare sector. The perioperative team does not consider generation, culture, ethnicity, and gender to rate individuals' contributions in the association. Promoting in the association also helps the nursing profession since members carry the same perspectives to their workplaces. Membership inclusivity helps in promoting effective collaboration in a diverse population. AORN's board of directors has also formed a diversity, equity, and inclusion committee to formulate a diversity inclusion plan in healthcare. The committee is responsible for formulating strategies that could help in promoting diversity and making AORN an equitable and inclusive association. 

Belonging

Professional associations are important to employees in diverse ways. Nurses benefit from associations through getting opportunities to further their education. The education opportunities could come from an association itself that can be offering certification or specific courses. Associations often offer courses at subsidized prices. Therefore, it is important to in higher education through associations since it can help in saving money.

1. Associations also help in networking. Some people have climbed the career ladder using the connections that they made through their professional associations. For example, a perioperative nurse could have some interests in another field such as urology, where a member in their organization is an expert. Therefore, the aspiring urologist can use the connections with the expert to learn more about the field and career avenues.
   
   References

Abbasinia, M., Ahmadi, F., & Kazemnejad, A. (2020). Patient advocacy in nursing: A concept analysis. Nursing ethics, 27(1), 141-151. https://doi.org/10.1590/0104-0707201700010001

Bacon, D. R., & Stewart, K. A. (2017). Results of the 2017 AORN salary and compensation survey. AORN journal, 106(6), 476-493. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aorn.2017.09.010

Cary Jr, M. P., Randolph, S. D., Broome, M. E., & Carter, B. M. (2020, November). Creating a culture that values diversity and inclusion: An action‐oriented framework for schools of nursing. In Nursing Forum (Vol. 55, No. 4, pp. 687-694).

Grissom, A. R. (2018). The alert collector: Workplace diversity and inclusion. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 57(4), 243-247. https://www.journals.ala.org/index.php/rusq/article/viewFile/6700/9025

Safety, W. (2021). AORN position statement on a healthy perioperative practice environment. https://info.aorn.org/rs/545-KCP-163/images/PS-on-Healthy-Periop-Practice-Enviroment-6.2021.pdf

Schmidt, B. J., MacWilliams, B. R., & Neal-Boylan, L. (2017). Becoming inclusive: A code of conduct for inclusion and diversity. Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(2), 102-107. https://education.virginia.edu/sites/default/files/DEI/BECOMING_INCLUSIVE_A_CODE_OF_CONDUCT_FOR_INCLUSION_AND_DIVERSITY.pdf

Tluczek, A., Twal, M. E., Beamer, L. C., Burton, C. W., Darmofal, L., Kracun, M., ... & Turner, M. (2019). How American Nurses Association code of ethics informs genetic/genomic nursing. Nursing ethics, 26(5), 1505-1517. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0969733018767248