Healthcare continues to evolve every year with the industry becoming more complex in the process. As changes happen, it’s important for CRNAs to be educated and put in a position to have a voice in local and national policies. Angela Mund, CRNA, has made this the focus of her career and she joins us to discuss ways to get our young professionals involved in advocacy.
Click the timestamps below to help you navigate through the many topics we discussed.
On This Episode:
Healthcare advocacy has been an area of focus for the podcast on numerous episodes, and we want to continue that conversation with Angela Mind, who is the CRNA Program Administrator at Medical University of South Carolina.
With more than 20 years of experience as a CRNA, Mund worked at the University of Minnesota Medical Center and the VA prior to moving to MUSC. It’s there where she’s really made it a priority to promote healthcare advocacy among the younger generation of nurse anesthetists.
On this episode of Beyond the Mask, we’ll spend time getting more insight into her beliefs and strategies when it comes to getting our industry more involved on the political side. As much as things are changing and involving in healthcare, it’s important to have a voice that can represent CRNA interests and she’s helping accomplish that.
When you listen to the show, you’ll learn a lot more about why this needs to be a part of the educational process. Mund believes nursing programs need to have policy introduced more often. It’s happening in some places but she believes it can become a bigger part of the curriculum. And it’s important that students receive information so they are comfortable with being engaged, lobbying, and working with a legislature.
From there you can find students that want to be involved in that. Once they are identified, then you need to get students out there doing it. That experience is crucial.
Speaking of experience, her students are required to go to a state or national meeting but not the AANA’s mid-year assembly. She finds the students that take the steps to attend the mid-year find it’s an incredible experience for mentoring and networking and that excitement is passed down to future classes.
That’s the goal because if we don’t have a say in policy now, it’s going to impact us years down the road. Feel free to reach out to us or Angela if you want more information about how to get involved.
Check it out at the top of the page and use the timestamps to help you navigate through the many topics we discussed.
1:50 – Angela Mund joins us for the show today.
2:02 – Background on Angela’s 22-year CRNA career.
2:48 – Engaging new graduates in healthcare advocacy is an important topic.
3:40 – What’s the optimal route for nurses to study health policy?
4:56 – Is it best to catch nurses while they’re young?
5:21 – Why is this more important now?
6:05 – How do we make sure our profession is educated about policy?
7:40 – Are there any programs that help foster this interest in politics to younger CRNAs?
9:13 – The AANA mid-year assembly
11:49 – What advice would you give other program directors?
13:19 – The difference in generations within the CRNAs.
16:07 – How did Angela ‘fall into’ a leadership role?
17:20 – How do you address the CRNAs that don’t to be involved in politics?
19:14 – We’re all lobbyists whether you know it or not.
20:50 – If you don’t want to get involved at a national level, what about the local level?
25:26 – Final message from Angela on getting involved in healthcare advocacy.
“Healthcare becomes more complex every single year and we need to make sure that CRNAs have the tools to be influential at every single level they want to be involved in.”
-Angela Mund, CRNA
