ENA CONNECT
New Online Community Enhancing Value for Members
The world just became a little smaller for ENA members. A members-only online community, ENA CONNECT, launched Aug. 8 at
connect.ena.org. ENA CONNECT is
designed for emergency nurses to interact and share ideas about
emergency nursing practice, education, research and policy. This
online community offers a variety of features, such as:
• Interactive discussions
• Resource and document sharing, including numerous
formats, such as video
• A secure member directory with multiple privacy settings
and search options
• An event calendar with links to event registration
• Profile pages, which can be uploaded from LinkedIn
Members can access ENA CONNECT with their existing primary
ENA email address and password at
connect.ena.org. We now
have single sign-on for all ENA applications.
Beta Tested, Member Approved
Last year, with input from the International Advisory Council
and Uniformed Services Work Team, ENA decided to create an
online community to better meet members’ needs. ENA
CONNECT allows more opportunities for networking and
engagement among the association’s widespread, diverse
membership. The community will help members stay current
professionally and develop and grow in their careers,
especially as features continue to be added.
Members can now have interactive discussions – including
private exchanges – via ENA CONNECT. Unlike discussion
threads in the old listserv ENA provided for many years, posted
conversations and documents in the new community are
archived and searchable. A variety of settings allow users to
adjust the frequency of messages to help prevent email
overload.
Before the community launched last month, a beta test was
conducted with hundreds of former listserv participants in
May and June. Feedback was collected from many of those
members, including a survey in June. Highlights from the
survey include:
• The four features ranked as most useful were discussion
posts, daily digest emails, document sharing and the
ability to search content.
• The top three expected benefits in the future were having
direct interaction with emergency nursing peers around
the world, the community’s 24/7 accessibility, and
knowledge building and sharing through member
discussions.
• Ninety-three percent of respondents said logging in to
ENA CONNECT the first time was very or extremely easy.
• Eighty-two percent said updating their profile was very or
extremely easy.
• Eighty-five percent were very or extremely satisfied with
ENA CONNECT.
• Ninety-six percent would recommend ENA CONNECT to
another member.
Direct Interaction With Peers
Michele L. Azevedo, MSN, RN, CEN, director of emergency
services at Southcoast Health in Massachusetts, has already
taken advantage of the discussion threads, posting and
replying to questions and uploading a document about
reducing blood culture contamination rates in emergency
departments. In addition to posting the document, she asked
what other departments had done to lower contamination
rates.
“I was amazed by the immediate replies” from around the
country, she said, and she applied them to her work. Several
suggestions were novel, and all were “very relevant.”
Azevedo also noted ENA CONNEC T was “quick and user-friendly.”
“The discussions are fantastic,” said Patty Bulicek, BSN, RN,
CEN, CPEN, an emergency registered nurse at White Mountain
Regional Medical Center in Springerville, Arizona. “I love being
able to browse discussions or post a new one and get replies
from nurses from a variety of settings across the country at all
hours of the day or night. The same goes for the file sharing.
What a great way to share things like policies and procedures,
for instance, that anyone who is working on writing or revising
for their own facility can use for ideas or – with permission –
to adapt for their own facility’s needs.”
Bulicek is particularly impressed by the permanence of
resources.
