New APNA Position on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
With this new position paper, APNA takes the position that “Diversity, equity, and inclusion are central to any solution to address health disparities and critical to advancing whole health“. Released May 2024, the APNA DEI Issue Brief outlines the essential connection between consideration of diversity, equity, and inclusion and providing the most effective PMH nursing care. The APNA Board of Directors now adopts the issue brief as an official APNA position, underscoring how diversity, equity, and inclusion are values “deeply rooted within PMH nursing”.
APNA members Barbara Jones Warren, PhD, RN, APRN-CNS, PMH-BC, FNAP, FAAN and Erica D. Joseph, DNP, APRN, PMHNP-BC, NP-C helm the APNA DEI Advisory Committee that is charged with exploring ways to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organization, as well as for the profession, and that contributed to the development of this position.
“We have a commitment as PMH nurses to look at DEI,” says Warren. “Scope and Standards # 8, Cultural Humility, is an underpinning of our practice.” This standard in the Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice states that “PMH nurses practice from a perspective of cultural humility.”
Barbara Jones Warren, APNA DEI Advisory Committee Co-Chair
Pointing to Dr. Hildegard Peplau’s foundational theory of the nurse patient relationship, Warren says, “We have to consider everything in that relationship. We always have to think about – what does the person, community, or organization that we are interfacing with need? There is no cookie cutter approach when you are dealing with patients, families and communities – everyone is unique and different.”
Warren describes the exchange between the APNA Board of Directors and the DEI Advisory Committee that culminated in the final position, “exciting and rewarding.”
Join Warren and several of her committee collaborators as they further explore DEI through aspects of measuring cultural humility in ourselves and those served. The workshop Walking Alongside Our Patients: The Spirit of Inclusion and Innovation is included in the program at the APNA 38th Annual Conference Wednesday, October 9. According to Warren, “[DEI] is an issue that has heartfelt meaning for us.”
APNA develops position papers in response to psychiatric-mental health nursing needs that are identified by APNA members in conjunction with the APNA Board of Directors. Position papers advance the profession of psychiatric-mental health nursing by discussing topics of vital interest to the profession and advocating for solutions or potential paths to address concerns.
Published July 2024
