Staff Nurses
Staff Nurses
ANA believes that Staff Nurses are the backbone of the American health care system; your knowledge, skills, work and commitment form the basis of patient care. Staff Nurses are also the backbone of ANA membership, and most of OUR work, expertise, resources and commitment are devoted to protecting you and the work you do.
Safe Staffing Levels
For the practicing RN, staffing is an issue of both professional and personal concern. Inappropriate staffing levels can not only threaten patient health and safety, and lead to greater complexity of care, but also impact on RNs’ health and safety by increasing nurse pressure, fatigue, injury rate, and ability to provide safe care.
ANA has worked continuously to ensure that safe staffing levels are recognized and implemented through surveys, research, data collection, and legislative means, and other activities. Check here for more information.
Mandatory Overtime
Staff nurses across the nation are reporting a dramatic increase in the use of mandatory overtime as a staffing tool. This dangerous staffing practice, in part due to a nursing shortage, is having a negative impact on patient care, fostering medical errors, and driving nurses away from the bedside.
Is this happening at your workplace? Read what ANA is doing to prevent this dangerous policy, and what other issues our legislative activists are working on for you. Read more...
Code of Ethics
ANA believes firmly that the work of the nursing profession should be based upon a usable and clear Code of Ethics. We are committed to addressing the complex ethical and human rights issues which nurses, especially staff nurses, confront every day.
The Code of Ethics was recently revised to include issues of advancing science, and is based on the experience and opinions of a wide range of your nursing colleagues. It is available to you online, in print, and in a related CE module. Go here
ANA’s Center for Ethics and Human Rights is working to increase the ethical knowledge and competence you need. Read about their work.
The Rights of Nurses
As staff nurses, you are aware of your responsibilities on the job. ANA works to make sure that RNs are also aware of their rights in the workplace. The ANA-written Bill of Rights for Professional Nurses lists these rights, and helps nurses understand how to use them to benefit themselves and to advocate for their patients. ANA also uses this document as a tool to inform policymakers that these rights must be protected to ensure the delivery of safe, quality care. For more information, see link below for Bill of Rights FAQs
Safety on the Job
Staff nurses work hard on the job, but they shouldn’t have to risk their health to do so. ANA is always working on ways to keep you and your workplace safe.
We have set up the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health to identify those areas of particular concern, and to provide information and materials that you can use to protect yourself and your patients. To read about COEH and its various programs and resources, go here.
Among our programs:
Back injuries are always a danger, so ANA mounted a profession-wide effort – the Handle With Care campaign – to reduce them. This campaign includes greater education and training, workplace information on increased use of assistive equipment, and efforts to reshape government ergonomics policies to protect nurses.
Safer needle devices and procedures will keep you safer, and ANA has information on this important program through our Safe Needles Save Lives campaign.
No staff nurse should have to deal with violence in the workplace, whether from staff, patients or visitors. See our information on ways to help your employer prevent this.
Hazardous chemicals, toxins, and dangerous waste products may be a part of the workplace, but there are ways to reduce and replace them. ANA’s RNnoHarm campaign has collected information and procedures to protect your environment.
Influenza no doubt impacts your workplace, but there are ways to learn about it and prevent it. ANA’s Influenza Initiative gives you the information you and your patients need.
Principles for Practice
Staff nurses deal every day with questions and concerns about staffing, delegation of tasks, and medical documentation, so ANA has developed a resource package to help you organize these areas. The package includes three easy-to-read resource guides; each guide contains practical information for professional practice and development in one of three areas: staffing, delegation and documentation.
Utilization Guide for the ANA Principles for Nurse Staffing - This guidebook will direct RNs on how to determine the level of nurse staffing for any setting..
Principles for Delegation - This guidebook provides guidelines for delegation of tasks to others.
Principles for Documentation - This guidebook focuses on managing the increasingly complex requirements of documenting patient care activities in both paper and electronic formats.
For more information on this package, go here.
Membership Benefits
ANA’s staff nurse members enjoy a wide array of member benefits; some benefits are useful to their careers or their lives, others are just fun. Go here to see a complete list.
Keep up easily with nursing and health care news through a variety of publications included with your membership: The American Nurse bimonthly newspaper; our new monthly journal, the American Nurse Today; and the Nursing Insider email newsletter.
Nursesbooks, the publishing arm of ANA, offers 20% discounts to members on most of their many titles, many of which are essential to the staff nurse.
Staff nurses need their own liability insurance, and ANA members can get a discount through our group policies, offered through the respected company, Marsh Affinity Group Services.
When you’re ready to reach for specialty certification, the American Nurses Credentialing Center has more than 35 certification exams available. Many exams are offered to Associate, Diploma and Bachelor’s prepared nurses, and ANA members receive a significant discount on exam fees.
Don’t forget to treat yourself occasionally! ANA has discounts on such popular programs as hotel stays and auto rentals, flowers and gifts, Dell computers, Global Fit fitness centers, and the ever-popular Crocs shoes.