Getting Involved with Your Professional Organization

The relationship between regulatory boards and professional associations is important, as is the need for clinicians to get to know their professional association’s leaders and the issues they are dealing with. Most state associations are powerful forces in influencing scope of practice and political decisions affecting practice. Some things to consider:

• Understand your state’s unique circumstances. The relationship between professional associations and regulatory boards differs from state to state. Understanding your state will prepare you to develop strategies and messages that will be most effective in meeting your goals. Membership in a state professional association gives you local professional support, a chance to network with colleagues, and to develop state-specific strategies. (State professional associations can often recommend attorneys with expertise in administrative procedures that govern investigations into scope of practice issues.)
• Don’t allow collective bargaining Collective bargaining is negotiation between organized workers and their employer or employers to determine wages, hours, rules, and working conditions. activities to deter your involvement. In the original APC Toolkit, Sue Davidson, then Assistant Executive Director of Nursing Practice, Education, and Research at the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA), cites the collective bargaining aspect of ONA as one barrier to membership. The perception of “union politics” and the influence of National Nurses United create divisions within the profession and may prevent clinicians from joining their state association.
• Keep in mind that anyone practicing in today’s health care climate is operating in a politically charged environment–although many practitioners in reproductive health (particularly abortion care) feel that it is the controversial nature of the specialty that makes them vulnerable.

The anti-choice groups are ramping up their efforts to “chip away” at abortion access. We are seeing parental consent bills, bills requiring abortion providers to be obstetrician-gynecologist physicians, bills requiring waiting periods, and “middle of the night” bills introduced to restrict PA practice. We notify state (AAPA) chapters of these legislative measures to restrict PA practice and provide resources so they can respond effectively.¹

• Getting involved can be inspiring and invigorating. The daily demands of practice and busy personal lives make it challenging for clinicians to be involved. Yet it is precisely this involvement that not only protects clinicians by bringing their collective voice to scope of practice determinations but also reinvigorates them.
• There is strength in numbers. Building alliances with peers and colleagues, presenting a unified voice within one’s professional association, and then representing the views of that profession to the larger community of regulatory boards and legislative bodies can have tremendous impact on the priorities and strategies of those bodies, an impact that cannot be replicated by those working outside a professional association.
• Regardless of the association’s stance on abortion, you will find colleagues committed to protecting scope of practice, and these colleagues will support a clinician whom they believe to be acting within her/his scope regardless of their political feelings about a patients’ right to choose abortion. Messages like this can go a long way in gaining allies: “No matter how you feel about abortion, this is an issue about scope of practice. It is dangerous to let politically-motivated complaints against nurses drive decisions about the best patient care.”
• Do not wait for a crisis. Build relationships with members of your state professional association before there is a scope of practice challenge. In some cases, professional associations assume they cannot take a pro-choice stance because their membership would not support it. It is critical that pro-choice clinicians make their presence felt in these associations and help bring the association and reproductive rights groups together in conversation.
• Understand that the primary job of the regulatory boards is to protect the interests of the public. These politically appointed boards are bound by law to regulate professional practice and education and to discipline any licensed professional who violates the statutes and rules. Professional licensing boards are mandated to investigate any complaint made against an individual clinician. Clinicians who do not understand the roles and responsibilities of the licensing boards may misinterpret board action as adversarial or punitive.

Despite the strong case for professional association membership, some clinicians are concerned about barriers to involvement. Finances might be an issue, particularly when individuals who provide abortion care feel a need to choose between their professional association and associations that specifically serve abortion providers (and they may also have to decide between attendance at professional conferences and clinical training opportunities). For those working in small clinics, this financial barrier, albeit an important professional investment, can feel insurmountable. Some clinicians express reluctance to join their professional association because they feel ostracized for their pro-choice stance or their commitment to providing abortion care. These are valid concerns that clinicians should address with their professional associations and colleagues. However, you would be surprised to learn of strong support for reproductive rights and social/reproductive justice in your professional organizations—at the organizational and individual level. See example of a state-wide coalition in California.