Professional Association Membership Custom Essay
Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses (AMSN)
The Academy of Medical Surgical Nurses (AMSN) is the only known national organization for the medical surgical nurses in the United States. The organization is made up of more than 10,000 nurses who are devoted in the improvement of quality nursing care for the patients admitted in hospitals (Ignatavicius & Workman 2015). The main objectives of the organization include; the improvement of patient care, development of the nurses personally and professionally, championing for the importance of the medical surgical nurses and the nursing as a specialization unit, and diversification through connecting with other healthcare professionals who share the same passion and commitment in care of the patients.
The mission of the organization is the promotion of excellence in medical surgical nursing. The purpose is to focus on the workplace advocacy through evidence based practice and research and knowledge. The
vision of the AMSN is to ensure that medical surgical nurses have developed professionally through national leadership and influence (Sonke et al.,2015). They have enabled the
organization of health in proper patient management and promoting care of the acutely medically ill.
The organization was developed with the aim of dedicating their efforts to develop nurses especially those working in the medical surgical nursing department. They have enabled an
improvement in the skills, level of expertise, and professionalism of all the medical surgical nurses through education, nurturing relationships, their certification, and promotion of quality nursing services through wellness of the patients. AMSN play important roles among the populations in the US. Some of the main contributions to the nursing profession include;
publication of the services provided by the healthcare facilities and the organization in general,
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involved corporate marketing for nursing services, conference management of the organizations
all over the country and all hospital facilities that provide their services, educating their nurses to
promote improvement of skill and expertise, invention and innovation of nursing services and
changes to the current standards of medical surgical nursing, they have provided funds to
promote delivery of health services, and proper information provision to their members and other
nurses (McBride et al.,2015).
Significance of AMSN and networking opportunities
The AMSN is strategically committed to creating a conducive and favourable
environment for all the medical surgical nurses. One of the most important significance is
enhancing the working environment of its nurses through helping them to navigate the various
changes that occur in the nursing profession and promoting their physical, emotional, and
psychological well being so that they can be able to cater for all the patients needs. In order to
achieve their objectives and goals, they have focused on education of the nurses, research in the
field of health and nursing, strategic partnership with the private and public stake holders, and
advocacy to ensuring the achievement of their purpose within the healthcare setting. Nursing is a
very difficult and challenging profession and many of the nurses are affected by the burnout
from work and may end up suffering from various chronic illnesses. Hence, it is the role of such
organizations as the AMSN to make sure that there nurses interests are well catered for (Sin &
Bliquez 2017). With healthy and well kept nurses, the delivery of services is achieved in the best
manner possible. With good and quality services, the patient care is improved and outcome is
enhanced. Hence, AMSN plays a vital role in managing and influencing the productivity of their
nurses.
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Apart from attending to the well being of their member nurses, the AMSN ensures that
the nurses are well paid and compensated for their efforts in nursing. Most of the nurses have had
difficulties with the payments as they are underpaid. That may affect the management of the
patients and the quality of care received. However, when they are motivated nurses are very
effective in delivery of care. One of the main challenging and tough departments in nursing is the
medical surgical nursing. They are required to be competent and knowledgeable in various
conditions that affect patients and how well they can be managed (Phillips 2016). Thus,
improvement of their skills and competencies should be achieved through the AMSN.
Another importance of AMSN is the provision of standard protocols and principles that
guide the nurses in their medical surgical nursing practice. They ensure that nurses observe the
regulations and requirements when caring for the medically sick. They control the working
standards of their members and they ensure that they are highly trained and competent to ensure
that quality care is achieved in all facilities. Taking care of patients is not an easy quest and thus,
nurses require follow up and motivation with a back up that they have somewhere they can turn
to in case of experiencing challenges. Even when the nurses have complains of the management
they experience in hospitals and by the government, the nurses’ grievances are well addressed.
Member information and changes in practice
The AMSN developed a position statement that enabled championing of their efforts and
support of their philosophy in nursing. The Healthy Practice Environments (HPEs) was drafted
to help with statement of the goal of AMSN and the roles and responsibilities of the
organizations to its members and the organizations (Bodenheimer & Mason 2016). It was
developed with the aim of establishing the welfare of the medical surgical nurses. They have
enabled positive changes in the nursing career through conducting research and further studies in
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the department of medical surgical nursing. The environment has been the main point of focus as
they try to determine the changes associated with improvement of care. Thus over the years they
have introduced new modalities and standard protocols which have led to improved nursing
management. There are several tools that have been used to effect changes in the field of medical
surgical nursing. One is the Practice Environmental Scale through which the government has
established programs to address issues that have been identified through the research. Once
shortcomings identified are addressed, the AMSN then comes up with better modes of practice
and interventions to promote nursing change.
The AMSN has advocated for more than 600,000 nurses in the United States through
addressing various issues such as poor staffing, workforce challenges, educational problems, and
nursing practice issues. Thus, AMSN ensures that there is effective staffing in all hospitals to
curb the shortcomings brought about by poor staffing such as unfinished nursing care, stress
among the nurses, extreme burnout, and poor turnout events. Additionally, the AMSN has
ensured the achievement of proper nursing through supporting of other medical organizations
such as the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and
Resilience (Streeton et al.,2016). They ensure that they share the information obtained from their
research studies to their community of medical surgical nurses. Thus, they observe the chain of
command in passing of their information to the working nurse at the hospitals. The newly
achieved changes in patient care include the application of high level skills in nursing,
involvement of compassion and commitment and protection of the nurses providing care for the
acutely ill patients.
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Educational opportunities and professional development
AMSN provides their member nurses with opportunities for furthering their education
which is a compulsory requirement for the members. Quality improvement is one of their targets
and goals in medical surgical nursing. One of the ways that can be achieved is by financing of
their member nurses so that they can further their education and enable improved skills and
experience for their members. Additionally, AMSN is also involved in education of its members.
They provide education about self care, resilience, patient and nurse well being, the negative
effects of nurse burnout, nurse bullying, and lateral colleague bullying (Coombs 2015). The
education of the members is done annually during the nurse’s annual convention meeting. The
organization has provided enough resources to their members to ensure that they continually
improve their skills and competency. They have funded the nurses who required further study
and through various public outreach and seminars.
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References
Bodenheimer, T., & Mason, D. (2016, June). Registered nurses: Partners in transforming primary
care. In Proceedings of a conference sponsored by the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation in
June.
Coombs, L. A. (2015). The growing nurse practitioner workforce in specialty care. The Journal
for Nurse Practitioners, 11(9), 907-909.
Ignatavicius, D. D., & Workman, M. L. (2015). Medical-Surgical Nursing-E-Book: Patient-
Centered Collaborative Care, Single Volume. Elsevier health sciences.
McBride, D. L., LeVasseur, S. A., & Li, D. (2015). Non-work-related use of personal mobile
phones by hospital registered nurses. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 3(1), e3.
Phillips, M. (2016). Embracing the multigenerational nursing team. Medsurg Nursing, 25(3),
197-200.
Sin, M. K., & Bliquez, R. (2017). Teaching evidence based practice to undergraduate nursing
students. Journal of Professional Nursing, 33(6), 447-451.
Sonke, J., Pesata, V., Arce, L., Carytsas, F. P., Zemina, K., & Jokisch, C. (2015). The effects of
arts-in-medicine programming on the medical-surgical work environment. Arts & health,
7(1), 27-41.
Streeton, A., Bisbey, C., O'Neill, C., Allen, D., O'Hara, S., Weinhold, M., … & Grubbs, P.
(2016). Improving nurse-physician teamwork: A multidisciplinary collaboration.
Medsurg Nursing, 25(1), 31.
