2025 APNA President’s Report

APNA President Joyce Shea

Dear Colleagues,

It is my honor to share with you our 2025 American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA) Annual Activity Report! This report is a celebration of what we accomplished together as a vibrant community of psychiatric-mental health RNs and APRNs.

At APNA, everything we do is guided by our core ideology, to be the unifying voice of psychiatric-mental health nursing, and guided by our Strategic Direction. Both were developed by the APNA Board of Directors (BOD), and we review and update them periodically to ensure that they reflect our profession’s shared vision.

This report shows how, through the collective efforts of our members, we are progressing toward our long-term vision: to be recognized as the leader in advancing psychiatric-mental health nursing to improve the mental health of the population.

Here are just a few highlights:

Shaping Practice

This year we established the APNA Scope & Standards of PMH Nursing Practice Council with your input and based on your feedback. It will bring together RN and APRN voices to expand understanding and advance clinical application of the scope and standards of practice to support decision-making and optimal patient care. We also launched a free webinar series to help transform addictions care – especially in rural communities where it is so needed. This series expands our suite of free CE on substance use care, which has equipped thousands of nurses with evidence-based practices to address the rising rates of substance use.

Advancing Mental Health Policy

This year we launched a mental health advocacy toolkit, which provides you with practical resources to elevate your role as nurse advocate, whether reducing stigma in the media, engaging local leaders, or shaping national policy. We also released the State of the PMH Nursing Workforce, providing critical data to policymakers to advocate for psychiatric-mental health nurses to practice to the full extent of their education and training. Both of these initiatives were born from member requests, underscoring how APNA serves as your avenue to turn needs into action.

Bolstering Education

The APNA Graduate Faculty Toolkit from the incredible minds of the APNA Education Council – Graduate Branch equips nurse educators to align curricula with the new AACN Essentials and prepare our new graduates for practice. Paired with the APNA Undergraduate Faculty Toolkit, these resources are a clear indication that APNA members are invested in PMH nursing’s future, helping our faculty prepare the next generation of PMH nurses.

Supporting Suicide Prevention

Together, we continue to lead the way in suicide prevention, thanks to the expertise within our membership. The APNA Position: Youth Suicide Prevention builds on the APNA Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Essential Competencies for Assessment and Management of Individuals at Risk for Suicide, with key considerations for providing care to youth at risk for suicide. In addition, four new courses presented by APNA subject matter experts supplement the APNA Suicide Prevention Certificate Program to ensure that PMH nurses have the suicide prevention & assessment tools they need.

Keeping Workplaces Safe

To add to the evidence base on a topic that is top of mind for many PMH nurses right now, special issues of the Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association (JAPNA) shared a range of research and scholarship on workplace violence. At the same time, the APNA Restoring Workplace Safety Task Force began developing an evidence-based resource of best practices for care of workplace teams following incidents of violence.

This year, we also laid the groundwork for some exciting future initiatives – the second comprehensive workforce survey, a position on procedural and neuromodulation approaches to treatment, and updates to foundational seclusion and restraint guidance. We also began a full revamp of the APNA Competency Based Training for Conducting the One-Hour Face-to-Face Assessment for Persons in Restraint or Seclusion course, which hospitals across the country rely on to train and educate their nursing staff.

Serving you and APNA in this role has been the honor of a lifetime. I am continually inspired by the extraordinary energy, insight, and compassion of our members, whether through Councils, Committees, Task Forces, State Chapters, or at our national gatherings. This association is strong because of you.

Thank you for making APNA a true member-driven community where together, we lift each other up, advance our profession, and improve the lives of the people in our care.

With pride and gratitude,

Joyce Shea, DNSc, APRN, PMHCNS-BC, FAAN
APNA President