President's Message
Welcome back for 2007, and what a busy year it has been already for CENA-SA! We are already hard at work organising the Emergency SA (EMSA-07) educational day and this year will be a HUGE step forward for SA, and a National first. This year will see the three peak emergency health care professional bodies joining forces to bring you a weekend of outstanding emergency education. CENA-SA welcomes the opportunity to co-present EMSA-07 with the Australian College of Ambulance Professionals (ACAP) and the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM).

The weekend guarantees excellence in education, skills workshops, FACEM registrar research presentations, networking, and the possibility of a new exciting opportunity to be announced later. Watch this space! Once again we can promise excellence in trade support with a wide variety of products and innovations on display for you to view, review and discuss with the reps. The networking evening Friday offer a unique opportunity to mix and meet with ambulance paramedics, doctors and nurses from variations within emergency health care in a casual, relaxed atmosphere well away from the stresses of a busy department!

October 2007 is the date for the next International Conference for Emergency Nursing being held in Melbourne Victoria. The website is up and running and you can now see the excellent list of keynote speakers and the program overview. The site is a terrific one-stop shop to book your conference tickets early, peruse the venue, plan your social functions, tours and accommodation. Do follow the links and plan ahead for this outstanding International event and we’ll see you all there in October!

Do you know who the emergency nurses in SA are? Well, don’t forget to visit the Members Only section to start to get to know your emergency peers. This section has commenced so that YOU can showcase yourself, your department, or your peers.

Your College works to represent you as emergency nurse, as well as the interests of the specialty of emergency nursing within the clinical arena and the wider health care system. CENA-SA recently submitted 2 Position Papers to the Department and the ANF regarding the current Career Structure Review and the Enterprise Bargaining discussions. These two papers have now been joined by the third and final submission, ED Nurse Staffing. Please look to the ‘news’ section to read these documents. We hope that these papers will positively influence the ongoing discussions and benefit emergency nurses resulting in safer and improved outcomes for our patients.

Don’t forget to place you nominations for the Emergency RN and EN of the year, and Emergency Department of the Year. Last year the Lyell McEwen Hospital took out this award, a great coup for SA and for the Lyell Mac too. Also to remind all CENA members of the Scholarships available, please follow the links for more information.

Michele Cruse
CENA-SA Branch President
National Director