A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT Betty Thomas, RN

Operating room nurses must assume respon- sibility for defining their role in the health care systems of the future.

In a February edition of the American Medical News, it was announced that the American Medical Association proposed to let nurses practice medicine on a “fee-for-service basis.” Nursing reaction was sure and swift.

After defensive anger came cool, deliberate and introspective evaluation.

Could there be merit in the AMA’s nurse- shocking announcement to bring us into the practice of medicine? Surely we wanted to be nurses, not junior doctors. But, after we regained our breath and after we stopped saying, “HOW dare they,” we began to see a little more clearly. We began to think a little more objectively.

At first some of us said, “Surely nursing will help us protect our role. Certainly they will not condone or allow anyone such as the physician’s assistant to stand between the physician and the nurse.” We may even have believed they would help us define our future role.

But then we said, “What about ourselves as operating room nurses? We are a part of nursing. Where do we fit into this new emerging system for health care?”

The Association of Operating Room Nurses decided early this summer to take positive action on this new concept. We decided not to wait for direction. We wanted to be a part of any planning regarding our function.

We were presumptuous enough to send our Professional Liaison Committee to meet with

AMA, the American College of Surgeons, and the American Nurses’ Association. We asked only to be involved in planning for our future. We shared our feelings and our concerns about the future of operating room nurses.

We talked about our expanding role, as we see it, and about how we are now attempting to fill the gap we see existing between the surgeon and the patient and between the anesthesiologist and the patient.

We wanted to explore with them, we said, how they see the OR nurse today. Had AMA considered our specialty when they took that most significant action last February?

It was a very interesting series of meetings. Since that time, both the AORN’s Professional Liaison Committee and the Statement Com- mittee have been hard at work fitting the pieces together and formulating plans.

This month the Board of Directors meets and will review all the research done by these two committees. Next February at the House of Delegates meeting you may be sure you will share the benefits of their work. You will be asked to act upon their recommendations.

Because it effects our future you must help us take the correct and necessary action. I do not know what that action will be, but I do know we must be involved in any plans to expand or change our role.

To allow others to take our place or to allow ourselves to maintain a continuing role which may be beneath our professional abilities would be unthinkable for operating room nurses and certainly unthinkable for AORN.