The Best Is Yet to Come …

It is hard to believe my term as President is coming to a close, and I carry in my heart many wonderful memories of this year. When I gave my President-elect address last September, I spoke about three signposts that I would use to mark my, and ENA's, journey in 2006. Here is a summary of that journey.

The first marker was strengthening our membership. As I stood at that podium in Nashville, we had 28,000 members, a record for ENA. But the best was yet to come. At our Annual Meeting in San Antonio this year, we celebrated a membership milestone, reaching the 30,000 member mark. We celebrated our success by introducing our 30,000th member, Paul Elmore, and his sponsor. We heard from over 100 members the answer to the question “What does ENA mean to me?” Your responses were moving, such as Tamra White's description of how a JEN article literally saved her patient's life, and we summed it up by saying “ENA members are simply the best.” The Resource Specialist program, introduced earlier this year to provide greater opportunity for member involvement, has been a great success. Over 130 members have submitted their names as experts, and over 50 people have been tapped to use their expertise to further ENA's work.

The second marker was to develop our next generation of leaders in ENA. Each of the nearly 600 delegates who gathered during the 2006 General Assembly to determine policy for the association was a leader, lending a voice to deliberations and voting for the future of ENA. Injury prevention, state president, and treasurer conference calls strengthened the local leadership of ENA, where emergency nurses work and live, where emergency nurses are influential in providing education, competence, and confidence to fellow practitioners. But the best is yet to come. We will be adding several programs in 2007 to increase our Government Relations activities for state leaders, increasing our skill and our presence in advocacy at the local, state, and federal level.

The third goal was to increase ENA's bonds with our fellow emergency nurses around the world. TNCC and ENPC once again went international, expanding to Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, and South Africa. Each country held provider and instructor courses, leaving a cadre of qualified instructors in each of these nations so that they can continue to educate emergency nurses in the highest standards of care for trauma and pediatric patients. Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to meet emergency nurses from Lebanon, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Romania, Spain, Turkey, Iceland, Greece, and Canada. What I have learned is that despite differences in our language, our appearance, or our resources, we all shared the same desire—to provide the very best care to our patients and their families. But the best is yet to come. The CEN examination will be offered on-line in Lebanon, the first international site approved for that format. TNCC and ENPC will continue their international reach, and ENA's influence as a leader in emergency nursing education will continue to grow around the world.

The best is yet to come for ENA. As I turn over the leadership of this association to your 2007 President, Donna Mason, I know ENA is in very capable and caring hands. Her vision for our future excites and energizes me! It has been an honor and my privilege to serve as your ENA President. My journey this year has been a remarkable one, and all along the way, I have been guided by heroes on their journey, ordinary people called to do extraordinary things, whose strength and character have been forged by their experiences. I call these heroes ENA members, and I am proud to be among you.