Collegiality: It's Priceless

As I write this message, I am deep into preparations for ENA's pinnacle event, our Annual Conference. I look forward to our conference for so many reasons: to conduct association business during General Assembly, the robust discussion around resolutions that set the course for ENA's work, and to attend classes on cutting-edge topics that make me a more effective practitioner. But one of the best reasons for attending the Annual Conference is the personal and professional relationships I share with my emergency nursing colleagues. As a MasterCard advertisement might state: Cost of registration: $350. Spending time with thousands of colleagues in emergency nursing: Priceless.

According to Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, colleagues are defined as “those explicitly united in a common purpose and respecting each other's abilities to work toward that purpose. Thus, the word collegiality can connote respect for another's commitment to the common purpose and ability to work toward it.”1

How is collegiality displayed by the members of our association? Let me provide an example. A discussion on the ENA Managers Listserv was sparked by a writer asking for advice as a first-time attendee to Annual Meeting. An outpouring of responses from people she had never met gave her advice, encouragement, and invitations to meet together during the conference. I read this discussion with amazement, respect, and heart-felt gratitude to those who responded to her query. What a warm, welcoming group ENA members are! To me, this is so typical of who we are. We are colleagues, bound together by a common purpose, a common vocabulary, a mutual respect for each other and for our individual contributions to the practice of emergency nursing.

Our lives as emergency nurses have been greatly influenced by the friendships and professional relationships we have been privileged to develop. I speak from personal experience. You, my colleagues, have shaped my clinical practice, teaching me both the art and the science of nursing. You, as coaches and mentors, stimulated my professional growth by encouraging me to attend courses and conferences, to continue my academic education, and to write articles for newsletters, journals, and chapters in books. All along you were molding me into who I am today; it is such a pleasure to know that I am never alone when I am in the company of an ED nurse. There is a bond we share, a language shaped by shared experience that allows us to telegraph meaning without words, to finish each others' sentences and to say, “Yes, I can believe that” when someone starts a story with “You will never believe this!”

It is my hope that the first-time attendee was able to use the geyser of information she received and had a fantastic time at Annual Conference. While ENA is now 30,000 members strong, there will always be nurses who need to experience what so many of us have already, the personal and professional energy that comes from collegiality.

Editor's Note: Ms. Bonolumi would like to make the following clarification regarding a statement she made in her August President's Message: In my August President's Message, I indicated ENA was developing a pediatric emergency nursing certification examination. The examination is being investigated by the Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing and the Pediatric Nursing Certification Board.