NAVAN sets new goals, creates vision for future
"We are very definitely now an international, multidisciplinary organization," says Kelli Rosenthal, MS, RNC, CRNI, CANP, current president of the National Association of Venous Access Networks (NAVAN). "I’ve just started a membership campaign called 1,000 in 2000.’ NAVAN currently has about 700 members, and we’re trying to get more people with a vascular access focus involved in the organization. Though our membership now is predominantly nurse-based, we just started a committee for outreach to consumers of vascular access services."
Rosenthal describes NAVAN as a very education-focused organization. The group has started a capital campaign to provide scholarships and support research in vascular access, and has a program for evaluating peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) training courses.
"Anyone who offers a PICC course can submit it to NAVAN for review," she says. "We assess it using very strict quality management standards. Many of our members are educators who teach PICC courses, and many of our manufacturer members offer PICC programs. It’s valuable to have a consistent set of criteria that people can apply to their programs."
Rosenthal says that consumers of those programs can be sure that if the courses they are considering have received the NAVAN approval it contains what they need to know. "Our review is a very exhaustive process, covering everything from the course content to ascertaining if the instructors who teach the courses have backgrounds in both PICC and adult education. There really isn’t another program out there that can help consumers evaluate how good a course is before they lay out their $150 to $200 to take the class. Since there is no PICC certification, any sort of portable credential is valuable for clinicians who place these devices to benchmark their practice against others."
Lynn Hadaway, MEd, RNC, CRNI, president-elect of NAVAN, concurs that the organization is proactive. "We’ve had a year of dynamite growth, and had a very successful conference in Orlando Sept. 25-29 with over 250 registered people and 47 exhibits."
Meeting of the minds
Hadaway believes one of the biggest highlights of the past year was a meeting between the boards of directors of NAVAN, the Intravenous Nurses Society, and the League for Intravenous Therapy Education. The resulting collaboration is currently in the process of creating position papers on safety issues around IV catheters and needlestick injuries, and the absence of Abbokinase and the catheter clearance issue.
"The major point is that we are working together on a lot of these things," she says. "We’re in the process now of gathering information about the state of all the states, the legislation that’s going on in the individual states, as well as the legislation at the federal level."
NAVAN’s conference committee and a group of manufacturers who usually display their wares at nursing and clinical conferences spent the last two years completely redesigning the group’s annual conference, reworking virtually everything.
"There’s going to be a lot more interaction beyond the exhibit hall," Rosenthal says. "We’ll have manufacturers’ roundtables and showcases in manufacturers’ theatres, where new ideas, new and potential products can be presented to groups of clinicians and maybe also groups of patients so the manufacturers can get feedback. This means the new devices on the market will already have the needs of the people using them addressed before the devices are ever released for use."
Rosenthal points out that this benefits the manufacturers because they know that if they include those recommendations people are going to use them. "It’s also useful for patients and clinicians because manufacturers are listening and are going to give them devices that meet their needs, so everybody’s happy," she says. "We want to open the doors to the conference and get the people who’ve been stuck in the exhibit hall in to listen to the lectures and benefit from their interactions with the patients and physicians."
"In the past year, we’ve dramatically improved the Journal of Vascular Access Devices [JAVAD], our official publication," Hadaway adds. "We now have a managing editor, Tom Lawson, who is working to bring in new authors and get their research and data published. We have several new departments in the publication, including the chapter connection section and a legal opinion column. We’ve invested heavily into getting a peer review process started. We’ve added a newsletter, Practical Access, that comes with JAVAD."
Hadaway describes NAVAN’s current goals, mission and visions as:
- To continue expansion to build and strengthen local networks.
- To promote, communicate, and facilitate the art and science of vascular access.
- To ensure NAVAN’s vision for the future that all vascular education is scientifically sound and learner-driven; that we accomplish communication by a variety of delivery methods in which we use all the different types of learning technology.
- To base vascular access education in scientifically sound and learner-driven criteria.
- To ensure communication is accomplished by delivery methods encompassing all types of learning technologies.
- To promote the consensus among clinicians, manufacturers, regulatory agencies, engineers, specialty organizations, and inventors regarding clinical, design, and development issues related to vascular access.
"Probably the loftiest vision statement is the one about achieving consensus," Hadaway says. "We want to bring everybody together. One of the things that’s different about NAVAN is that we encourage membership from multidisciplines. We have physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and manufacturers’ representatives, engineers, sales, marketing, design people, researchers; everybody is invited to the table."
[Editor’s note: Membership in NAVAN costs $75 per year and includes a subscription to JAVAD. For further information, contact NAVAN, PMB 205, 11417 South 700 East, Draper, UT 84020. Telephone: (888) 57-NAVAN. Web site: www.navannet.org.]
Need More Information?
Kelli Rosenthal, MS, RNC, CRNI, CANP, President, Rosenthal and Associates, 325 Virginia Ave., Oceanside, NY 11572. Telephone: (516) 763-6280.Lynn Hadaway, MEd, RNC, CRNI, President, Hadaway and Associates, P.O. Box 10, Milner, GA 30257. Telephone: (770) 358-7861. Fax: (770) 358-6793.
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