AORN Chapters: Advocacy training for a new generation of leaders
By Philip Dunn
Contributor Editor
After AORN grassroots advocacy members in Indiana successfully saw an RN as Circulator law through to fruition, Diana Sullivan, RN, MSN, CNOR, and Teresa Nosek, RN, BSN, CNOR, ONC, sought to tell their colleagues in Indianapolis about it. They were eager to sustain the momentum that they and other AORN grassroots advocacy leaders had built, and looked forward to advancing new legislation.
In talking to her colleagues, Sullivan realized that not all of her chapter members understood what she was talking about.
"Most of these nurses didn't have the background. They were so caught up
with the day-to-day of their work, which of course is so complicated and timeconsuming, that they had put limited time into learning how the legislative process works," Sullivan recalls. "We wanted to have an exciting way of bringing this back, because we thought it was important to keep the members informed and involved."
So Sullivan took advantage of tools being offered by AORN to teach members how to advocate on behalf of the association and the profession. In August, she showed approximately 45 members of the Greater Indianapolis Chapter the AORN webinar on Advocacy 101-the featured tool in AORN's arsenal of efforts to extend its grassroots advocacy network by offering tools from the Government Affairs section of its Web site,
www.aorn.org/PublicPolicy/.
Sullivan's efforts were the latest in an association-wide effort to make advocacy more member-centric by bringing advocacy training straight to chapter meetings. Chapter leaders are being encouraged to make advocacy training a regular part of chapter meetings. The goal: to train a new
generation of leaders and make sure that advocacy is always on members' minds, not just when advocacy alerts are sent.
The webinars, which can help nurses fulfill Continuing Education requirements, are one tool in the arsenal of training members, says AORN Government Affairs
Manager Josephine Colacci. The goal: to build the grassroots network such that leadership comes from the grassroots themselves.
"Advocacy is most meaningful when it comes from working perioperative nurses who understand what it's like to be in the patient care setting," Colacci said. "Advocacy may seem intimidating, but it's only intimidating the first time. Our hope is that AORN members grow so confident with the process that advocating on behalf of the profession and on behalf of patients becomes second nature."
Other tools that AORN is offering include:
• An action steps guide for chapter presidents, which helps presidents advise their members on how to get involved in advocacy
• A public policy "road map" to help chapters navigate AORN's online public policy resources
• Model letters created by chapter presidents to chapter members on advocacy
• A chapter challenge letter identifying tasks that chapter members can achieve to support their state coordinator in legislative activities.
So far, the two webinars-"Advocacy 101: Tips, Tools, and Terminology" and "Legislative Mumbo Jumbo: Tips For Making Sense of it All"-have proven popular and effective as a means of driving the point home.
"The webinar gave an overview in simple terms of a complex process," Sullivan says. "We localized it to Indiana by telling members about the actions we took, to make it meaningful. It was a way for us to celebrate our success, and reinforce the message that while we were
successful, it didn't just happen-that we followed a series of steps that are by and large the same steps used across the country."
The webinars describe the basics of how an idea becomes a bill and how a bill becomes a law. They describe the regulatory and rulemaking process, the importance of offering formal testimony and informal visits to state legislatures, and how important it is to mobilize the grassroots at certain periods. They emphasize the power of constituency-in the ability of everyday nurses and voters to make a difference.
It's a message that AORN Region 2 state coordinator Edgar L. Nelson, RN, BS, EDM, CNOR, emphasized when he showed the Webinars to members in South and North Carolina. "We're getting people really interested now, but this is only the beginning," Nelson says. "These will really pay off when we start calling on people through grassroots advocacy alerts to start contacting their legislators. That's when the training we're doing now will
bear fruit."
Read the Public Policy online road map, right, for links to additional information.