President's Message

January 2011 began with the annual TOADN convention in San Antonio. This year the Board of Directors was able to secure Carol Thorn from the Oregon Consortium for Nursing Education (OCNE), as the keynote speaker. Since the distribution of the IOM report and recommendations for nursing education, the Oregon Consortium for Nursing Education (OCNE) has been one of the models reviewed as a successful method bridging the Associate Degree nursing graduate into obtaining their Bachelor Degree in Nursing. Ms. Thorn described the process of the development of the consortium which currently consists of eight community colleges and the Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing. They have a shared curriculum taught on all consortium campuses. Students can complete coursework for the Bachelor of Science Degree in Nursing from OHSU without ever leaving their home campus. Ms. Thorn described the challenges and successes of the implementation of the program. In addition, Ms. Thorn described aspects of their concept based curriculum and provided examples of alternative clinical approaches for clinical learning for students at the clinical setting. The feedback from attendees has been positive. The attendance of participants and vendors at the convention was a record breaker this year. Lu Pelayo and her team from Alamo Community College did a great job of coordinating the convention.

The February TOADN meeting's main focus was the Board of Nursing's guidelines for the implementation of the Differentiated Essential Competencies (DECs). Board of Nursing plans to do a workshop to provide more in depth recommendations to successfully incorporate the DECs into nursing curriculum.

In March, Lu Pelayo and Deborah Yancey attended the Texas Team Summit held in San Antonio. The summit was held to launch Texas efforts on the Future of Nursing Campaign for Action (CFA). The CFA is a collaboration created by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the AARP Foundation to ensure that all Americans have access to high quality, patient-centered care in which nurses contribute as essential partners in system-wide transformation. Texas is in the process of applying to become a recognized Regional Action Coalition (RAC). Their purpose is to advance the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action. RACs will further the overall effort by capturing best practices, determining research needs, and tracking lessons learned and identifying replicable models. The Texas Team has been challenged to move forward swiftly and effectively to advance the health of Texan's through nursing. Leadership teams have been formed for the Texas Team Advancing Health through Nursing and will hold meetings during April and May 2011. After the summit, a TOADN Board of Directors conference call was held in which the events of the summit were discussed. In summary, it appears that the recommendations that will be the main focus for Texas will be #4: increase the proportion of nurses with a baccalaureate degree to 80% by 2020, #5: double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020, and #6 ensure that nurses engage in lifelong learning. Specifically associate degree nursing will need to move forward with collaborative agreements that decease barriers to enable students to smoothly transition from their ADN to BSN in a timely manner.

As Associate Degree Nursing concludes this year with the challenges of the Texas budget shortfalls, implementation of DECs, and the recommendations of the IOM report, I feel we can all step up to the challenges and successfully work toward our TOADN goals.