Promotional flyer design for the American Mobile Satellite Network

Nursing Flyer

The Benefits of Membership in the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses (AMSN)

The Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses (AMSN) is one of the largest nursing organizations in the United States, with over 10,000 members (AMSN, 2012). Medical-surgical (MS) nurses practice in a variety of settings, including impatient, outpatient, and the homes of patients. The AMSN exists to help promote the professional development of MS nurses, improve patient care, and through collaboration influence healthcare policy impacting patient care. The mission of AMSN is to strive for excellence in MS nursing, while its vision is to work continuously toward patient care excellence.

Benefits

All nursing professionals, whether AMSN members or not, can take advantage of the CMSRN certification study aids, attend the annual convention, access the MEDSURG Nursing journal and newsletters, look for a job in the career center, study the MS standards of nursing, and network with other MS nurses (AMSN, n.d.). But why settle for less? AMSN membership not only provides access to these benefits, but also opportunities to influence the priorities, mission, vision, and patient care values that define AMSN, along with healthcare policy on the local, state, and national levels.

With a membership exceeding 10,000 nursing professionals the potential for making a real difference in the quality of patient care is significant, especially in collaboration with other professional nursing, physician, and medical organizations. For example, AMSN joined with Abbott, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, and the Society of Hospital Medicine to launch the website Malnutrition.com (Lewis, 2014). The target audience of this website is clinicians caring for patients suffering from malnutrition at the time of admission, which afflicts close to 30% of all inpatients. This example highlights how AMSN members engage with other professional organization to improve patient outcomes, an increasingly important role as the U.S. healthcare landscape continues to rapidly evolve (Fights, 2012).

Membership in AMSN provides other benefits in addition to those mentioned above (AMSN, n.d.). Earn free CNE contact hours accessing the source material available through the AMSN Online Library. Members enjoy lower prices for CMSRN certification and certification preparation materials and can access much of the source material online or in print. AMSN membership also offers the opportunity to hone leadership skills by volunteering to serve in a local chapter or on a national committee. If extra funding would make a significant difference in your career aspirations as an MS nursing professional then membership may be one way to achieve these goals; members can receive awards, scholarships, and grants through the AMSN.

Upcoming Meeting

Even though the launch of the Malnutrition.com website was wildly successful (Lewis, 2014) there is still a need to increase awareness of inpatient malnutrition as a significant health problem. Towards this goal, AMSN will host a meeting open to all clinicians with an interest in patient malnutrition. The forum and date have yet to be determined, but the meeting is tentatively scheduled to take place during the month of January in 2015. AMSN will invite malnutrition experts to give oral presentations and host poster sessions. A call for poster abstracts will probably be announced in September, 2014.