OPENING SESSION
Showtime for ENA leaders
“I am thrilled to see so many of my leader colleagues here at this conference,” ENA President JoAnn Lazarus, MSN, RN, CEN, said Friday as she launched the Opening Session of Leadership Conference 2013. With a commitment to developing future leaders, association mentoring and board member communications, Lazarus shared her goal of focusing her presidential year on areas vital to sustaining and growing ENA.
“These are tumultuous times in our nation, especially in health care,” Lazarus said. “There are several leadership skills that are critical to the success of your role as ENA leaders and as leaders of this environment.”
Advocating for emergency nurses, the profession and patients is an essential leadership skill, Lazarus said. She pointed to ENA’s strong showing in this area with the first Advocacy Intensive, held in January, and the ENA “Day on the Hill,” scheduled for May 15.
Succession planning – growing new leaders who will take members’ places both in ENA and at the bedside – is being addressed this year with a new ENA Board of Directors mentoring program, Lazarus said. The board mentoring program will pair an emerging leader with a board member, and the two will spend the year developing leadership goals and an action plan for the mentee.
Progress is also under way in the third critical area of communication. Lazarus launched an interactive weekly president’s blog Jan. 1 and has been sending monthly updates to state council presidents to summarize “what’s happening at ENA” from her perspective. She encourages all members to provide feedback on her blog site.
Lazarus urged members to take full advantage of the Leadership Conference’s varied networking opportunities and to make a point of making new connections.
Quoting Laura Schwartz, former White House director of events and a speaker at ENA’s Advocacy Intensive, “It’s showtime!”
Supporting ENA’s Leaders
“I bring you greetings from your fabulous national ENA staff,” said ENA Executive Director Susan M. Hohenhaus, LPD, RN, CEN, FAEN (left), who provided a behind-the-scenes update on how ENA staff are supporting members and accomplishing the work of the organization.
“You may remember that last year at General Assembly I talked about the focus of our IT infrastructure and building a lean, productive team of talent,” she said. “By investing the resources of the organization in these two key areas, we’ve been able to do things like provide a conference app for you, managing and refining the membership database and working with a technology consulting company, redesigning and rebuilding a website that should be deployed midyear 2013.”
Taking full advantage of social media and technology tools has improved how the national office communicates with members, remote staff and some national committee members.
“This investment by the ENA Board of Directors allows us to work quickly and efficiently,” Hohenhaus said.
Other recent and ongoing accomplishments include the following:
- ENPC revision has launched
- TNCC and GENE revisions are on track to deploy in 2013
- CATN revision is under way
- ENA Staffing Guideline tool is scheduled to be available next month
“We are not perfect, but we continue the big dig through rapid-cycle improvement processes and course-correction repair issues as they are uncovered,” Hohenhaus said.
“By investing our resources in these areas, we not only able to accomplish these things, we were able to do it in a fiscally responsible way,” she added. “Instead of ending 2012 as planned with a deficit budget of about $777,000, we actually finished in the black with a bottom line of $92,000 – more than a quarter of a million dollars better than budget.
“So I thank the ENA Board of Directors for trusting the treasure of the association operations to our incredible national office team. And we thank you for your continued feedback and support.
“And, yes, JoAnn, you’re right. It’s showtime.”
Amy Carpenter Aquino