You Make a Difference
ANAC celebrates nurses as educators
The theme of Nurses Week 2023 is You Make a Difference, recognizing the varying nursing roles as well as the positive impact nurses have on everyone's lives. Nurses bring vast knowledge and expertise to every healthcare setting across a wide range of roles, serving individuals and communities throughout the continuum of life. Nurses make a difference by developing, influencing and implementing research or health policy that contributes to quality care and health equity.

Each day this week, ANAC will highlight one of the many roles open to nurses and the ways ANAC supports those roles.
All nurses are educators. It is an inherent part of our role to provide education to our patients, clients, their families, our colleagues and the public. As the most trusted profession, nurses play an essential role in sharing knowledge and skills training in health promotion, illness and injury prevention, symptom management and disease control across the lifespan.

Nurse educators play a crucial role in educating nursing students and colleagues. Whether it is a first-year nursing student or a seasoned nurse seeking professional development, nurse educators combine clinical expertise, adult learning approaches and academic rigor and scholarship to develop and provide nursing education. Nurse educators inspire, teach and mentor the next generation of nurses, leading the way to the future of patient care. They serve as role models, facilitate learning and critical thinking, ensure core competencies and instill a lifelong commitment to holistic care, nursing ethics, the nursing process and evidence-based practice.

Nurse educators advance an understanding of research, leadership, inter-professional collaboration, public health, health policy and other inter-sectional issues that impact health outcomes.

How does ANAC support nursing education?
Core to ANAC’s mission is the professional development of nurses and others involved in the delivery of healthcare for persons affected by HIV and its co-morbidities. Many of our members are nurse educators and academic faculty and we value their contributions to ANAC in scholarship and as faculty for our educational initiatives. ANAC plays an essential role in providing our members, others in the nursing profession, the HIV community and the public with up-to-date, evidence-based education on HIV prevention, evolving therapeutics, co-occurring conditions, intersectional issues such as social determinants of health, stigma, health policy and nursing professional issues. Many of our educational efforts begin in ANAC committees, including the diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI), rural, palliative care and global committees. ANAC chapters also play an important role in developing and delivering nursing educational programming to their members & local communities.

ANAC is accredited as a Provider of Nurses Continuing Professional Development (NCPD formerly called CNE) by the American Nurses Credentialing Center. This designation identifies organizations that demonstrate excellence in education activities that advance nursing practice and improve outcomes. By participating in accredited NCPD activities, registered nurses can maintain continued competence in a rapidly changing healthcare environment. ANAC offers NCPD contact hours with participation in our designated webinars, learning modules and conference sessions.

Educational programming is available on the ANAC website. Nurse educators and clinicians serve as faculty for our online HIV and aging modules. We also rapidly responded to the COVID-19 and mpox pandemics with nurse-led education and resources containing the most relevant, timely and evidence-based information on the pandemics. The highly regarded and peer reviewed Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care (JANAC) provides a vital resource in nursing education.

A strength of ANAC is our active collaborations with other organizations committed to nursing education. We join with the American Academy of Nursing, the American Nurses Association, the Nursing Community Coalition and Sigma Theta Tau International in promoting and supporting nurse education and nurse educators.
Please consider making a donation to the Nurses Week scholarship fundraiser, to support nurses and nursing students who might otherwise not be able to attend the annual ANAC conference. Your donations will help them expand their clinical knowledge, learn the latest advancements in nursing research and strengthen their advocacy skills at ANAC2023.

Last year, ANAC awarded 13 full and partial scholarships. We want to exceed this benchmark with a goal of raising $5,000 during Nurses Week. All donations received May 5-12 will be put towards the scholarship fundraiser. Thank you for giving!