This year's conference is to celebrate 25 years of the British Anaesthetic and Recovery Nurses Association (BARNA). BARNA originally started as Anaesthetic and Recovery Nurses Association, the British bit came later!
The organisation was founded by a group of interested and specialist nurses for the benefit of the specialities of Anaesthetics and Recovery. The focus of the association has always been standards, quality and the promotion of the specialities; and this continues to be our focus today. It is a great privilege to be the chair of the Association in its 25th year, I follow in the footsteps of some remarkable leaders of BARNA who had the foresight to set up, promote and develop this association, however, who is going to be the next BARNA leader? We are always looking for recruits to join the BARNA committee and the sub-committees, which we want to develop to further our work.
We have faced many challenges during the last 25 years and I am sure these will continue, some will be constant and others will be transient. It is our resilience as an organisation that keeps us going, our passion for our profession and our specialisms.
At the outset of BARNA who could have dreamed that we would be the British representative for the International Federation of Nurse Anaesthetists (IFNA), that we would have such strong bonds with the American Society of Peri-Anaesthesia Nurses (ASPAN) or that the Irish Anaesthetic and Recovery Nurses Association (IARNA) would be developed and work closely with us. There used to be a Scottish Association of Anaesthetics and Recovery Nurses (SARN) who sadly folded a few years ago due to lack of membership input.
This year is set to be very exciting; in October we will be hosting the first International Conference for Peri-Anaesthesia Nurses (ICPAN) with ASPAN, IARNA and the NPANC – National Association of Peri-Anesthesia Nurses of Canada. As an organisation we are developing international relationships that will further promote the work of BARNA. I hope you will try to attend this inspiring conference in Toronto, Canada. Please see www.icpan.info for further information on this exciting venture.
This is going to be a truly international event with speakers from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Greece, Ireland, United States of America, United Kingdom, Pakistan and Denmark. The programme is well developed and balanced educational offering.
So my question to you, the BARNA membership is how are we going to develop BARNA over the next 25 years? What do you want, what do you need in clinical practice – answers on an email to Natalie.quine@barna.co.uk
Are you interested in being the next BARNA leader or becoming more involved in BARNA – applications to Natalie.quine@barna.co.uk – look forward to an inbox full of responses.
Over the next year the BARNA committee is going to continue to work on developing core competencies, revising the BARNA standards and the BARNA Constitution among other things. So please join us on the journey to develop and promote the work of BARNA and our unique specialisms.
