Maryland Nurse Journal - July 2022

Page 4 • The Maryland Nurse Journal July, August, September 2022
ANA/MNA News
Report on The ANA Membership Assembly
By Linda J. Stierle, MSN, RN
MNA Member-at-Large to ANA MA
For the first time since 2019, the American Nurses
Association’s (ANA) highest governing body, the
2022 ANA Membership Assembly (MA), met in
person on June 9th thru 11th to conduct the business
of the association and elect ANA leaders. More
than 300 nurses and others gathered at the Grand
Hyatt in the District of Columbia. The Maryland
Nurses Association (MNA) was represented by its
four elected voting representatives to the ANA MA.
The two MNA Officer Representatives were current
MNA Past President, Dr. Charlotte Wood, and Past
Treasurer, Dr. Mary Jean Schumann; the two MNA
Member-at-Large Representatives were Ms. Donna
Zankowski and Ms. Linda Stierle, MNA Committee
on Bylaws & Policies Chair, as well as Chair of
the MNA Committee on Nominations and a past
ANA Chief Executive Officer. Also, in attendance
were MNA’s nonvoting Alternate Representative
to the ANA MA: Past MNA President and ANA’s
Immediate Past Consultant to the National Student
Nurses Association (NSNA) Ms. Rosemary
Mortimer. Also, in attendance were MNA’s current
President, Dr. Christie Simon-Waterman, and MNA’s
Chief Staff Officer (CSO), Ms. Jacqueline Patterson.
The Maryland Delegation were pleased to have Ms.
Gwen Johnson from District 5 at our table; she was
representing the ANA Organizational Affiliate, Chi
Eta Phi Sorority, Incorporated, and Dr. Pat Travis,
MNA Past President and current member of the ANA
Committee on Bylaws.
The 2022 ANA MA mirrored in every way the
pre-pandemic MA, the last one being in 2019 at the
Grand Hyatt. The various components of the ANA
MA are: Hill Day prior to the start of the ANA MA,
Dialogue Forums, Candidate Forum, Voting, Political
Action Events, American Nurses Foundation Donor
Luncheon, Networking & Discussion luncheons, and
business and discussion sessions of the ANA MA.
These activities were spread out between June 9th
and June 11th.
ANA Hill Day: See page 3 in this edition for more
information
Welcome Reception & Awards Ceremony: This
was held Thursday evening. It started with a halfhour
of heavy hor d’oeuvres in the Independence
Foyer; everyone then transitioned to the Constitution
Ballroom for the 2022 President’s and National
Awards Ceremony, where the twenty-one awardees
were recognized. There were seven recipients of
the President’s Award: Karen Daley, PhD, MPH,
RN, FAAN; Martha Dawson, DNP, RN, FACHE;
Adrianna Nava, PhD, MPA, MSN, RN; Debra Toney,
PhD, RN, FAAN; Daniella Vargas, MSN, MPH, MA-
Bioethics, RN, PHN; G. Rumay Alexander, EDD,
RN, FAAN; Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN. ANA
Hall of Fame Inductees: Anne P, Manton, PhD, RN,
FAEN, FAAN; Barbara Nichols, DL (H) Dec(H),
PEDD (H), MSN, RN, FAAN. National Award
Honorees: Advocacy Award: Denise Driscoll, MSN,
RN-BC, CARN, PMHCNS-BC, NPP; Sally Morgan,
MA, RN, AGPCNP-BC, ACNS-BC; Jessica Peck,
DNP, APRN, CPAP-BC, CNE, FAANP, FAAN.
Distinguished Direct Patient Care Award: Casey
Green, BSN, RN, CCRN, CRRN, CFRN, CEN,
TCRN, CPEN; MNA District 7 member; Duke
Harvey Lagtapon, BSN, RN, CCRN-CMC-CSC,
CHFN. Early Career Nurse Leader Award: Naomi
Hanoch, BSN, RN. Foundation of Nursing Practice
Award: Denise McNulty, DNP, MS-HAS, NPD-BC,
NE-BC. Leadership in Ethics Award: Vivienne
McDaniel, DNP, MSN, RN. Luther Christman
Award: Kevin Emmons, DRNP, RN, APN,
AGPCNP-BC, CWCN, CFCN. Mary Mahoney
Award: Jonnie Hamilton, DNP, PhD, RN. Public
Health Service Award: Lisa Patch, MSN, BS, RN,
NCSN; Anumol Thomas, DNP, FNP-C, CCRN.
HEARING - ANA’s Racial Reckoning
Statement: It was submitted by the ANA Board of
Directors. In 2021, the ANA began an intense effort
to understand its own history regarding racism in
nursing. The result is an initial racial reckoning
statement that serves as an apology to nurses of
color who have been harmed by decisions and
omissions made by ANA that contributed to racism
in the profession. There was a one-hour hearing to
allow members to react to this draft statement prior
to asking for members to adopt it. Linda Stierle,
as a Maryland voting representative made a verbal
statement in support which was also submitted
in writing to the Professional Policy Committee.
On Saturday afternoon, ANA’s racial reckoning
statement was adopted by the membership by
unanimous consent. With this statement, ANA is
launching a sustained effort dedicated to ongoing
reckoning and reconciliation, forgiveness, and
healing. It was and is a historic moment for our
professional association.
ANA Membership Assembly: The ANA MA
was scheduled for three sessions on Friday and
Saturday totaling 8 plus hours to conduct the
business of the association. ANA President, Dr.
Ernest Grant, chaired the ANA 2022 ANA MA and
called it to order after being informed a quorum was
present. A Nightingale Tribute was conducted by
ANA President Grant. He read the poem “She Was
There,” authored by Duane Jaeger, RN, MSN from
the Kansas State Nurses Association, recognizing the
death of nurses this past year. Dr. Grant provided a
Presidential Address; other presentations included
an update by the ANA Chief Nursing Officer, the
Chief Executive Officer of the ANA Enterprise, the
ANA Treasurer, the President of the National Student
Nurses Association and the Presidents of ANA’s three
subsidiaries: the American Nurses Foundation, the
American Academy of Nurses, and the American
Nurses Credentialing Center. There was also a
presentation from the President of the International
Council of Nurses (ICN), Dr. Pam Cipriano, the
Immediate past president of ANA. ANA was a
founding member of the ICN in 1899; ICN was the
very first international health care organization.
There were also two one-hour presentations and
discussions on Saturday. The first session addressed
the work of the APRN Taskforce: Enterprise Tools to
Dismantle APRN Practice Barrier. The second hour
was a discussion of COVID’s impact and Implications
for nursing. At the end of the MA meeting,
Rosemary Mortimer, MNA Representative, went
to the microphone and asked for a point of personal
privilege to make a statement and proposal for the
ANA BOD and Political Action Committee (PAC)
to consider. Permission was granted and her proposal
read as follows: “I would respectfully request that
the ANA Board of Directors and the Political Action
Committee (PAC) add a criterion that candidates
for congressional office will be denied eligibility
for financial support if they have supported by their
verified action or inaction, any attempt to breach
the Constitution of the United States or the peaceful
transfer of power.” It received a standing ovation from
the ANA MA in a show of support.
Dialogue Forums: There were three forums; all
three were each conducted for 50 minutes on Friday
afternoon. Dialogue Forum #1: It addressed Impact
of Climate Change on Health and was submitted
by the New Hampshire Nurses Association, ANA-
Michigan, ANA-Vermont, Minnesota Organization
of Registered Nurses, and the Alliance of Nurses
for Healthy Environments. Dialogue Forum #2
addressed Advancing Solutions to Address Verbal
Abuse and Workplace Violence Across the Continuum
of Care and was submitted by a member of the New
Jersey State Nurses Association and members from
the National Association of School Nurses. Donna
Zankowski as a Maryland voting representative,
made a statement in support of the Professional
Policy Committee (PPC)’s recommendation for zerotolerance
of verbal abuse and workplace violence.
Dialogue Forum #3 addressed Nurse Staffing and
was submitted by ANA’s PPC. The final policy
recommendations from the three dialogue forums from
the ANA’s PPC were made available to the registered
attendees late Saturday morning and were discussed
and voted on Saturday afternoon. The Nurse Staffing
recommendations generated the most discussion with
some revisions to the PPC recommendations prior to
adoption by the membership.
ESREC Meeting: On June 2nd, a Zoom
Meeting was hosted by the New Jersey State Nurses
Association (NJSNA) of the Eastern Seaboard
Regional Executive Conference (ESREC), one of
four informal geographic ANA regions. ESREC
is comprised of the following states: CT, DE,
MA, MD, ME, NH, NJ, NY, PA, RI, and VT. The
purpose of the meeting was to permit candidates
for ANA elected offices an opportunity to interact
with the ESREC voting representatives. All eleven
(11) candidates took advantage of this opportunity.
Each candidate had five minutes allotted for them
to provide a thumbnail sketch of themselves and
then answer a couple of questions from the voting
members. On Friday, June 10th, the ESREC members
met in person to decide the future leadership if
ESREC. NJSNA has been leading this group since
2020. Prior to 2019, the leadership of this group
rotated year by year between each of the eleven states
that comprise ESREC. The final decision was that
there would be two co-chairs to divide the workload.
Judy Schmidt, NJSNA, and Cammie Townsend,
ANA-MA, will co-chair ESREC. In 2019, the
ESREC decided that they wanted to submit proposed
amendments in 2021 to the 2019 ANA Bylaws. This
did not happen in 2021 due to the pandemic. ESREC
plans to submit proposed amendments to the ANA
Bylaws in 2023.
Meet the Candidates & Candidate Forum:
Each Candidate is assigned a table in a designated
section of the ANA meeting space. The candidates
were at their election table between Friday morning
prior to the start of the ANA MA. Voting members
are encouraged to visit the candidates for one-on-one
dialogue with the candidates. The Candidate Forum
was held on Friday afternoon for 1.5 hours, 5:00 –
6:30 PM.
There were two Officer and two Director positions
to be elected in 2022, each with a two-year term of
office; there were eight (8) candidates for these four
elected positions as members of the ANA BOD.
The three Secretary candidates, the two candidates
for Director-at-Large, and the one candidate for
the Staff Nurse Director-at-Large each had three
minutes to address the 200 Voting Representatives
from the ANA Constituent/State Nurses Associations
(C/SNA) and the Individual Membership Division
(IMD), the 39 ANA Organizational Affiliate voting
members, and the nine ANA BOD members. The two
candidates for President each had five minutes. There
were four (4) candidates for the ANA Nominating
and Elections Committee (NEC).
Voting: Voting occurred for two hours Saturday
morning. Officers require a majority to be elected
while Directors and members of the NEC only
require a plurality of votes to be elected. If an officer
does not get a majority vote, then a runoff-election
is held among the two candidates who received the
most votes during the initial voting period. A runoff
election was required for the Secretary position.
The ANA Membership Assembly elected Jennifer
Mensik Kennedy, PhD, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN,
of the Oregon Nurses Association as the association’s
next president to represent the interests of the nation’s
more than 4.3 million registered nurses. Mensik
has more than 25 years of nursing experience in a
variety of settings ranging from rural critical access
hospitals and home health to hospital administration,
and academia. She has served as President of the