President's Message

As I complete my term as ENRS President, I want to share with you how grateful I am for the honor of serving our esteemed organization and its members. Each member is so vital to this organization and I am appreciative for all of your support.  I want to thank the Executive Board, committee members, and the ACG Management Team. I appreciate each of you for your willingness to serve this organization. I am truly honored by the lasting relationships I have built with you, my valued colleagues. I also want to take this opportunity to reflect on our accomplishments and to officially pass the torch to Dr. Marie Marino who will be assuming the role of the President at the close of the annual conference. 

Conference News

Many thanks to the 2024 Conference Planning Committee, overseen by our ACG team, chaired by ENRS President-Elect Dr. Marie Ann Marino, and facilitated by the wonderful team of volunteers Dr. Marino has brought together to plan the 36th Annual Scientific Sessions in Boston on April 4th and 5th 2024. The theme for this year’s conference is Trailblazing Innovative Models of Care in Population Healththrough Nursing Science. I am grateful to each member of the planning team who has worked hard to make this conference a reality. The team includes Gabrielle Santulli and Drs. Ariana Chao, Susan DeSanto-Madeya, Jennifer Ross, Corrine Jurgens, Anne Mitchell, Deb Lundquist, Cherlie Magny Normilus, Kristin Sethares, Marie Borgella, Patti Mason, Eunji Cho, Sherry Burrell, and Jennifer Shiroff. We are excited about the opening keynote speaker Dr. Sun Kim, the plenary panel of Drs. Dorothy Jones, Marianne Ditomassi, and Marie Borgella, the funding panel and publishing panel.  

I know we all look forward to celebrating our outstanding researchers at the annual awards presentation and welcoming our newly elected ENRS Executive Board and Committee Members at the annual meeting. If you have not already done so, there is still time to register.  We welcome you to join us whether you are a regular attendee, returning, or new member. For more information see this link. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some other accomplishments that have occurred over the past two years. 

RIGS

The Research Interest Groups (RIGs) are the backbone of our organization. Under the leadership of Dr. Lisa Kitko, the RIGs have been modified to ensure that each RIG is active with engaged leaders. As a result, some RIGs have merged and others were removed.  However, we have also had an interest in creating new RIGs that have been approved by the Board. They include Military and Veteran Health, Nursing Education and Nurse Scientists: Advancing Research in Practice.

IDEA

Recognizing the amount of work involved in pursuing our ongoing goals as an organization to be inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible, our Executive Board met with the IDEA Advisory Board to determine the need for this board to remain advisory or to be a formalized committee. We all agreed that there was a need to formalize this advisory board, initiated under the leadership of Past President, Ann Marie Mauro to a standing committee. The IDEA Committee continues to help us grow on our journey to be more knowledgeable and thoughtful about issues of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility. We are grateful to this team for their guidance and work with the membership committee as described below.

Membership

With over 1,000 members, the number of members continues to grow. I am grateful to this committee which worked so hard to ensure a robust number of members. I also appreciate their work with the IDEA committee 

to survey our membership so that we can have a greater understanding of who are members are, what their needs are, and how we can best serve them. The membership committee has also been involved in the consistent offering of webinars as a benefit to our members.

Organizational Development

We recognized the confusion around being a partner of ENRS and being a conference sponsor. We heard from our nursing leaders about the best ways to streamline this process. Our ACG team worked with the Organizational Development Committee and Executive Board to simplify these opportunities. Under the leadership of Dr. Dorothy Jones (also a Past President), this committee worked to meet our sponsorship goals. This column will go to print before I know the final numbers, but I do know there was a broad interest from organizations across our region both academic and hospital-based in wanting to support ENRS.

Archive Task Force

We are in the process of formalizing our archive task force. We have learned the ENRS archives are at the University of Connecticut. We have members of ENRS who are interested in nursing history in combination with others interested in capturing the history of ENRS. Together they will work to capture, catalog, and share the history of ENRS.  I look forward to hearing how this work advances in future newsletters.

Networking on a National Level

Regional Research Groups: As your ENRS President, I regularly met with Presidents from the Midwest Nursing Research Society, Southern Nursing Research Society, and Western Institute for Nursing. Some exciting things we have only begun to explore include offering discounts on regional membership if a member would like to be a member of more than one region. One of the other things we have discussed is creating a leadership academy that would be offered to members as a way to develop new leaders. I know I leave these initiatives to Dr. Marino to continue to explore.

The Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science National Advisory Council: As the President of ENRS and along with the leaders of Sigma, the American Nurses Foundation, and the Presidents of the other regional nursing research groups, we work collaboratively to promote nursing science nationally. The purpose of these meetings is to bring together nurse scientists, educators, and practitioners from member organizations to discuss and disseminate nursing research findings to strengthen nursing practice and improve client outcomes. Importantly, the RIGS for CANS  include early-career and mid-career options.  I often hear about the need for career development both at the early and mid-career phases, and CANS uniquely provides an opportunity for people at these levels to come together and share their expertise.

In closing, ENRS is thriving and remains on the cutting edge of nursing science. We applaud the exceptional achievements of our members and their strong commitment to promoting health through nursing science. I am grateful and honored to have served as your President – thank you! 

Warmest wishes,