ENA General Assembly Day #1 - Town Hall Report

Day #1 of the ENA General Assembly (GA) finished up with a Town Hall style meeting. This is an activity which has been done at the last several ENA GAs and has continued since. It is an opportunity for members to meet in a collegial and informal setting and ask quetions and engage in an "open forum" with the ENA leadership. This provides an opportunity for members to directly ask questions or discuss ideas with the leaders in a setting in which they might not otherwise be able to so easily. Each town hall meeting has several ENA leaders and members of the board present.

The town hall meeting Wednesday evening went quite well. Participation was good and there were approximately 40-50 members present to share.

Some of the topics/items shared are presented here...

One member brought up discussion that they were having a hard time getting "buy in" on TNCC education at her small community hospital because they aren't a "trauma" center and apparently the adminstration felt that they didn't need "trauma" education.

The presenter aknowledged that TNCC was an outstanding course that taught good ED nursing skills as far as patient assessment. Members of the ENA board and those involved with TNCC development responded. They said they understood the point and suggested that this person try to promote TNCC education from the standpoint that a lot of trauma doens't come into the ED by EMS/prehospital, but also by private vehicle or "walk in". As such, it seems that "trauma" education even in the non-trauma centers is definitely of benefit. There was no indication that the naming of the TNCC product was going to be changed, but that maybe a strategy for marketing it differently to address the broader needs of all EDs.

Another question was presented regarding the newest BCEN certification, the CPEN (Certified Pediatric Emergency Nurse). It was pointed out that the CPEN is the only BCEN credential which includes a clinical practice requirement in order to sit for the exam. Currently the other BCEN credentials do not have this (CEN, CTRN, CFRN). The question was asked as to why this practice requirement was made and if in the future, the other credentials would move to include a clinical requirement also.

The response was that the CPEN was developed in conjunction with the Pediatric Nursing Certification Board (PNCB). The joint venture was necessary to establish core content and competencies and as such necessitated the CPEN mirror the pre-existing clinical practice requirement of the PNCB.

So basically the CPEN is a "joint-certification" and shares similarity with PNCB. The other BCEN credentials (CEN, CFRN, CTRN) are unique to BCEN and share no joint development with other certifying boards.

Finally a member from California ENA brought up for discussion that in her state they were having a new mandate from their state legislation. AB 911 mandates that the EDs use a matematical formula to calculate how "full" or "busy" they are with high acuity patients. The presenter discussed how they are not sure how these numbers are going to be used but they are having to dedicate resources to fulfilling this obligation. There was also concern that this mandated a certain softward package or method to do this. Another speaker, also from California, stated that she felt it was a useful tool because part of the calculation was taking into account some patient/system acuity beyond just the ED as it includes numbers of ventilators available etc.

The ENA town hall board responded that they were not as familiar with this recent legislative madate, but would keep their eyes on it in the future. It was stressed to the attendees that this was an example of needing to keep active on the legisltative forefront via our ENA's support structure.

Conclusion:
The town hall meeting ran up until the end of time and probably would have gone on longer if there was not a time constraint.

This author has attended the GA Town Hall meeting for th past 4 GAs. I have always appreciated the venue and felt that it was beneficial. It's a nice forum to get a "direct line" to the people with answers or to get referred to those who may be able to help more. It has always been open, informal and a good use of time.

I'm going to suggest to the ENA conference committe that we continue this forum, maybe even to have it repeated on one of the days of the "reguular" conference too, or to extend the time to 90 minutes or so because there has always seemed to be more topics pending that people wanted to discuss.