Time is a neurosurgeon’s most valuable and scarcest commodity and the lack of it your biggest challenge. Your neurosurgical practice is only as efficient and effective as the support team you have assembled. The professional support staff you hire can enhance, expand and safeguard your practice.
The neurosurgical nursing staff must achieve and maintain a high level of expertise to complement their experience in the fast-changing technological medical market. Today’s patient consumers are medically literate about their healthcare. They are no longer misinformed consumers but well-researched Internet shoppers. Patients can access state-of-the-art diagnostic and treatment information and research literature. They can check on your credentials and summaries of malpractice cases in the state registries. They have choices even within the managed care industry.
Benefits of Membership
On behalf of the AANS Adjunct Subcommittee on Allied Health Science Professionals, I encourage neurosurgeons to sponsor their professional nurses who have also chosen neurosurgery as their specialty to seek Associate Membership in the AANS. Nurses who have credentialed their expertise by certification and experience can further their proficiency and enhance your practice by participation in the AANS.
Membership benefits provide far more than reduced meeting registration fees and frequent mailings of neurosurgical materials. Membership and annual meeting attendance offer participation in collaborative practice education to heighten practice horizons. Keeping current in our discipline can no longer depend upon journals and books that are months in the editorial process. The Internet and interactive meetings are now fundamental to our education. Joint Section newsletters and seminars keep AANS members on the leading edge of information including the initiation and results of clinical trials and alternative treatments available for your patients.
Focused current information relevant to your subspecialty is imperative. Patients are increasingly more knowledgeable about their disease. Staff must be prepared to respond. Unique networking opportunities at the annual meeting allow them to discuss issues with other nurses, neurosurgeons and physician assistants. They can identify resources ranging from outcome measures to clinical problem solving.
The ability to access the major neurosurgical equipment companies and their senior representatives is invaluable and cannot be underestimated. Staff will have more time to examine the new technology and discuss equipment problems. They can also collect information from the durable medical equipment companies to improve your patient care.
The patient education materials, resources, and organization information must not be undervalued. The ability to offer input in person to companies on your needs is the essence of a collaborative practice. Simultaneous sessions can be a challenge but not if your colleagues share information. Keeping up is not enough to be an expert: we must keep ahead.
I invite you to sponsor and encourage your nursing colleagues to apply for Associate Membership. Please contact me or the Membership Office for further information. I can be reached by phone at (305) 585-5475, via fax at (305) 585-2644 or by e-mail at [email protected]. The number for the Membership Services Department is (847) 378-0543.
Mimi Watson Sutherland, RN, BSN, MS, CNRN, is Co-Chair of the AANS Adjunct Subcommittee on Allied Health Science Professionals.