Once again, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) proves it knows how to host a gathering—especially when it’s celebrating its own birthday.

Around a kitchen table in Nashville.

It was in 1969 that nurse Norma Shephard invited several nurses to a meeting; sitting around her kitchen table in Nashville, Tennessee, they formed what has become one of the largest and most successful nursing specialty organizations in the world. Five years later, in 1974, the AACN held its first annual National Teaching Institute (NTI) in New Orleans (I was there!). Today, the AACN numbers over 200 chapters and 100,000 members.

Its annual May NTI meeting is one of the largest nursing meetings, and this year’s meeting in Orlando was no different, with about 8,000 attendees, 200 educational sessions, and 400-plus exhibitors of products, educational and health care organizations, and recruiters. It takes about two days to really “do” the NTI exhibit hall.

From ‘nursing as hospital expense to nursing as investment.’

“Our Voice Our Strength” was the theme chosen by AACN President Lisa Riggs, MSN, RN, APRN-BC, CCRN-K, when she began her term last year. In her opening keynote, Riggs emphasized the power of the collective voice of nurses to make change. She’d like “to shift the conversation from nursing as a hospital expense to nursing as an investment.” She urged nurses to unite in efforts to improve the workplace environment to benefit patients and nurses, and to make clear nursing’s essential role in achieving patient care outcomes.

I interviewed outgoing president Lisa Riggs (right) and president-elect Megan Brunson (left)—you can listen to the podcast with these two impressive women below:

 

Other 2019 AACN NTI conference highlights:

  • Awards presented at association meetings can sometimes seem irrelevant, unless you’re really involved in association matters, but the Pioneering Spirit awards presented at NTI had thousands up on their feet for standing ovations for each award. This year, the awards, presented to individuals who have made significant contributions that influence acute and critical care nursing, went to:
    • Sharon Inouye, for developing the CAM-ICU tool for assessing confusion in ICU patients
    • Céline Gélinas, for her innovation in assessing pain in nonverbal patients
    • Dorrie Fontaine (a former AACN president), for her work on compassionate care, creating healthy work environments, and educating nurses for today’s environment. (She got a resounding cheer when she said, “We must prepare nurses with their souls intact.”)
    • A personal favorite for me: seeing fellow nurse editor JoAnn Grif Alspach, the longtime editor of AACN’s clinical journal Critical Care Nurse, get the Marguerite Rodgers Kinney Award for a Distinguished Career
  • AACN launched the Nurse Stories Project at NTI. In partnering with StoryCorps, a nonprofit, AACN hopes to document the stories of critical care nurses. Attendees can record stories on-site and in person, but the project is also open to those who couldn’t attend, via an app (see the site above for the link). Recordings will be preserved in the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress.
  • Megan E. Brunson, MSN, RN, CNL, CCRN-CSC, AACN president-elect, spoke about her perseverance in pursuing nursing (she was kicked out of her first nursing school), her work as a night shift ICU nurse at a Dallas hospital, and her respect and appreciation for her colleagues’ grit. She unveiled her theme during her address—’Unstoppable’—because, she said, “We are nurses. We cannot be stopped from doing what’s right for our patients.” Her presidency begins July 1.
  • Michelle Poler, a professional speaker and “influencer” (how does one get to be that??) was the opening session speaker, and presented a montage of videos, music, drawings, and anecdotes detailing her personal project, 100 Days Without Fear, and challenged attendees to find and face their fears. Her “aha” message: “The enemy of success is not failure—it’s comfort.” We need to challenge ourselves to do things that make us uncomfortable if we want to change things.
  • A huge timeline poster of AACN’s 50 years dominated the registration area, and attendees covered it with messages, remembrances, and hopes for themselves, nursing, and AACN’s future.

A mother and son, both nurses, attend the conference together.

And, of course, there were the hundreds of clinical concurrent sessions (my favorite: Nicole Kupchik on “Critical Care Studies You Should Know About: A Year in Review.” (Nicole will be launching an ECG column in AJN later in the year.)

Each year, AACN does something a little bit new, a little bit differently and each year nurses keep coming back, sometimes even bringing family. I met a mother and son—she’s the day charge nurse and he’s the night charge nurse in the same ICU!