Are you a member of OPANA? 

We value your insights and would love to hear your feedback! We invite our members to complete a short survey and needs assessment to help us continue to improve our offerings and support for the PeriAnesthesia nursing community. 

As a thank you, participants who wish to enter their name/email as an option, will have the chance to enter a draw to win a $100 Lululemon gift card. 

Click the link https://www.opana.org/membership/ to access the survey in the members area.

Your input is invaluable to us, and we truly appreciate your time and contribution.

Thank you for your continued support of OPANA!

Fellow PeriAnesthesia Nurses,

On behalf of NAPANc, I wish all PeriAnesthesia Nurses of Canada a Happy PeriAnesthesia Week 2024.
This year, PeriAnesthesia Week is from February 5 to February 11. During this week, we celebrate all the achievements and work of PeriAnesthesia nurses.
Throughout this past year, healthcare has focused on addressing and minimizing the surgical backlog. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our surgical wait-time lists have expanded to overwhelming, extensive, and sometimes unattainable wait times. For the first few years of the pandemic, many PeriAnesthesia nurses were deployed to help the critical care units
and any other units that would require our help. However, now that the focus has changed in healthcare, PeriAnesthesia nurses have been tasked to help reduce the surgical backlog. Hospitals have found unconventional ways to decrease the backlog: scheduling elective cases on weekends, creating high-intensity surgical models, increasing utilization of anesthesia assistants, etc. The reduction of surgical backlog would not be feasible without the expertise, knowledge, skills, and dedication of PeriAnesthesia nurses.
As I’m starting my term as President of NAPANc, I would like to say THANK YOU to all PeriAnesthesia Nurses for their dedication and resilience. Last spring, I witnessed the enthusiasm of everyone who attended the very successful National Conference in Ottawa. It was wonderful to be able to regroup as a specialty association and share our knowledge. This year, we will be hosting either a virtual late spring conference or an in-person conference in the fall—more details to follow.
Lastly, please do not hesitate to share suggestions or ask questions at info@napanc.ca

On behalf of NAPANc, thank you,
Tanya Lachapelle, RN, BScN, MEd, PANC(c)
President of NAPANc, 2023-2025

Fellow PeriAnesthesia Nurses,

I would like to take a moment to wish you all a Happy PeriAnesthesia Nurses Week!  This is a week to celebrate our practice and recognize your colleagues for the outstanding work that you do daily.  Although perianesthesia nurses make up only a small percentage of nurses overall, you are a group of specially trained nurses who are resilient and strong and who face change and challenge regularly, all while providing the best experience possible for patients and their families.

To those nurses who are certified in the Perianesthesia Nursing Specialty, I urge you to continue sharing your knowledge with your colleagues who weren’t fortunate enough to receive this certification.  In 1597, Sir Francis Bacon published a saying in his work “Knowledge itself is power”.  The more that this information transfer happens, the more that a perianesthesia nurse knows, and the more likely they will be able to utilize critical thinking while caring for patients.

Please take some time to not only acknowledge yourself and the work that you do, but the work of those on your team as well.  Without you, a large piece of a healthcare puzzle would be missing!

Happy PeriAnesthesia Nurses Week!

Leigh-Anne Marshall

NAPANc President 2020-2022

Ontario PeriAnesthesia Nurses Association would like to wish all our members a special Perianesthesia week

Dear valued PeriAnesthesia Nurses,

I want to take a moment to wish you a Happy PeriAnesthesia Week 2022 on behalf of OPANA.

Ontario PeriAnesthesia Nurses have demonstrated our value as a specialized nursing group this year with skills that extend beyond perianesthesia. We are an extremely knowledgeable and adaptable group that conquers anything. We continuously show empathy and compassion towards our patients and towards ourselves. This pandemic highlighted how resilient PeriAnesthesia Nurses are. We have been asked to go beyond our comfort zone to help other units in need, and we did. We were able to navigate and adapt to our temporary homes.

As a PeriAnesthesia community of professionals, OPANA is committed to ensuring that we thrive as a specialized nursing group. We are in the process of planning an upcoming symposium scheduled for fall 2022. We are currently focusing on the educational needs of Ontario PeriAnesthesia nurses. We are open to any suggestions that would benefit OPANA members and would greatly appreciate any feedback to share with us.

Moreover, Ontario has been selected to host the 2023 NAPANc conference to be held in May 2023 in Ottawa. Planning will be starting soon.

On behalf of OPANA,

Tanya Lachapelle
OPANA President 2021-2023

Happy Perianesthesia Awareness Week For the past year perianesthesia nurses have been asked to do a variety of jobs outside of their regular role and they have not only been up to the task, but also highly valued in many ways. Perianesthesia nurses have been added to ICU teams, floated out to many different surgical and medical units. We have been giving injections at COVID-19 vaccine centres, collecting samples at assessment centres, and have become PPE experts. All of this while holding down the fort in preop clinics, surgical admissions, PACU and surgical day cares. Perianesthesia nurses should be very proud of the resilience and positive attitude they have shown for the past year. Celebrate this week with your perianesthesia team and share what we do with family and friends. Please reach out to OPANA if you have any questions. We are here to help. Sincerely, Candace Epworth, RN, BScN President, OPANA 2020/2021

Hello OPANA members, Attached some COVID-19 links for your reference. A Zip file with Quick look guides is also attached. These sheets can be printed and are very helpful. For practice and competency questions : Links to Covid-19 information for nurses can be found at the RNAO and CNO website : https://rnao.ca/covid19 and https://www.cno.org/en/trending-topics/novel-coronavirus/ ASPAN has developed a ‘ COVID- 19 Toolkit ‘ : the link can be found here: https://www.aspan.org/Home/COVID-19 Also, Michener and UHN have developed: The Michener Critical Care Learning Website https://criticalcarelearning.ca/login/index.php. Here you will find very helpful leaning modules. We have attached a ‘ how to register for Michener tip sheet’ in order to access the Critical care learning website at Michener. Also from The Society of Critical Care Medicine and University of Toronto: https://www.quickicutraining.com/topics/ access to a zip file with all of the Quick look cards is attached to this email Another great resource form U of T: ICU For non ICU Clinicians https://covid19.sccm.org/ OPANA BOD

Dear OPANA members, The OPANA Board of Directors would like to reach out to all of our members to take this opportunity to recognize the extreme personal and professional challenges that many of you may be facing during this COVID-19 Pandemic. The devastation that this disease has presented to us provincially, nationally and internationally is unprecedented. Please know that we are working collaboratively with our nursing leaders, anesthesia and surgical teams and we are collecting the work that has been done at different organizations for future guidance on pandemic planning; at this time OPANA recommends following local hospital guidelines which should align with provincial & national recommendations. We recognize that many of you, as peri-anesthesia nurses, may have already been redeployed to different areas or are in the process of shadowing in a clinical area to prepare for a possible pandemic surge. We understand that some of you may or may not have had previous experience in these different environments which can be very stressful. To support our OPANA members the best we can, we have provided several excellent resources that we hope you will find helpful. Most of the clinical information has been developed specifically for the Covid-19 pandemic situation. As we try to manage our day to day responsibilities, we want you to know that the OPANA Board of Director group are here to support you as we all navigate our way through these uncertain times. We would like to acknowledge your professional dedication during these extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Please stay safe. Feel free to reach out through the OPANA website for any additional information and support. We are working on posting COVID information in the days to come. With respect, OPANA BOD

OPANA would like to welcome its new Board Member Lynn Haslam (Advisory Council). Also, we wish to acknowledge Ramona Hackett as our new Newsletter Editor. Congratulations!

NAPAN© is proud to announce a unique Bursary for the National Conference Registration Fees (at the Early Bird Rate) applicable to any and all PeriAnesthesia Nurses currently registered and working in Canada. For full details and an application form, click the link below:
http://www.opana.org/downloads/NAPANc_Bursary_for_2012_Conference.pdf

Deadline is August 1.

We are conducting a study of a new FREE information service for evidence-based pain management.

Pain+ will make keeping up to date and applying the latest research in clinical practice easier for clinicians. To save you time, these articles will be pre-assessed for quality by research staff, and for clinical relevance and interest by practicing clinicians. A wide range of publications from multiple disciplines are surveyed.

As a “one-stop” access to current best evidence from research on pain management, Pain+ offers:

• A searchable database of the best evidence from the health care literature

• An email alerting system

• Links to selected evidence-based resources

Pain+ was developed as part of a research study comparing two different types of access to pain research evidence.  Study participants will be randomly assigned to one of 2 ways of sharing research evidence: 1) sending e-mail alerts and reviews about the best new pain research; or 2) access to web-based resources.  All participants get to try both services for 9 months each for FREE.

Eligibility criteria:

(1) physicians, nurses, occupational/physical therapists, psychologists who are currently seeing patients at least 1 day per week;

(2) are fluent in English,

(3) have access to a computer at home or at work which has unrestricted access to the World Wide Web, and

(4) have an active email account.

For more information: http://plus.mcmaster.ca/PainPlus/

Contact person: Margaret Lomotan at lomotam@mcmaster.ca or 905-525-9140 ext. 27328.

NEW!  Continuing education opportunities are available through Conestoga College for Perianaesthesia and related programs. See our new Education Opportunities page for complete details:

http://www.opana.org/education.phtml

Welcome to our new web site! With this new site we hope to provide the perianesthesia nursing community in Ontario with a central location for networking with others in the field. Together we can pool our knowledge and experience to improve our profession, and you can be a part! Register now to have full access to the resources of our site, including our new discussion forum!

PeriAnesthesia Nursing had received approval from the proposal submitted to CNA (Canadian Nurses Association) recognizing PeriAnesthesia Nursing as the 20th nursing specialty in Canada. The approval milestone allows us to be able to begin the process of developing a certification exam for our specialty nationally.

http://www.opana.org/downloads/CNA_Letter_of_Designation_for_CNA_Certification_NAPANc.pdf

In order to prepare for the removal of codeine from the hospital formulary on July 1, the Pain Matters Task Force has put together an evidence-based information summary (see below) to assist in this transition.  They have included the scientific rationale for the removal of codeine from the formulary, and alternative strategies for the management of moderate to severe pain.  4D and PICU have already removed codeine from their ward-stock and have replaced it with morphine in their various protocols, and to date are not aware of any problems in their transition.

Evidence-based information summary:

http://www.opana.org/downloads/CODEINE_Evidence_Summary.pdf

Links for further information

Pain Management Clinical Practice Guideline:
http://notesapp01/hsc/policies.nsf/58a8a9d53cb5993e852570ed005bd27b/1adc718ea2ad24118525732a005df50a?OpenDocument

Research on codeine:
http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/News/Codeine-may-be-life-threatening-in-some-children.aspx?articleID=13748&categoryID=news-type

Morphine for pain relief in children:
http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/HealthAZ/Morphine-for-Pain-Relief-in-Children.aspx?articleID=13563&categoryID=AZ1e