Nursing & Health Sciences: Agencies & Associations

The CDC is one of the major operating components of the Department of Health and Human Services. CDC works 24/7 to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S. Whether diseases start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, curable or preventable, human error or deliberate attack, CDC fights disease and supports communities and citizens to do the same.

The Code of Ethics for Nurses was developed as a guide for carrying out nursing responsibilities in a manner consistent with quality in nursing care and the ethical obligations of the profession.

This blog was created to answer your questions about the nation’s transition to electronic health records and to create a conversation about the challenges and successes health care providers, physicians, practices, and organizations are experiencing as they transition from paper to electronic health records. 

The Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care provides leadership to advance the understanding and practice of patient- and family-centered care in hospitals and other health care settings.

The User Services Unit of the NLM Reference and Web Services Section, Public Services Division,compiled these subject guides. The guides serve as research starting points for health professionals, researchers, librarians, students, and others. Each guide lists many free, Internet-accessible resources. The guides are not meant to be comprehensive but to introduce some of the major resources available on each topic.

Nursing Central™ is the premier source of disease, drug, and test information for nurses. Five trusted references, including a leading medical dictionary and literature searching, make finding answers and improving patient care easy.

The American Association for the History of Nursing (AAHN) is a professional organization open to everyone interested in the history of nursing. Originally founded in 1978 as a historical methodology group, the association was briefly named the International History of Nursing Society. The purpose of the Association shall be to foster the importance of history as relevant to understanding the past, defining the present, and influencing the future of nursing.

AACN is the largest specialty nursing organization in the world, representing the interests of more than 500,000 nurses who are charged with the responsibility of caring for acutely and critically ill patients. The association is dedicated to providing our members with the knowledge and resources necessary to provide optimal care to critically ill patients.

The vision of the organization is that work and workplace community environments will be healthy and safe. The mission is to ensure that occupational and environmental health nurses are seen as the authority on health, safety, productivity and disability management for worker populations.

The American Nurses Association (ANA) is the only full-service professional organization representing the interests of the nation's 3.1 million registered nurses through its constituent and state nurses associations and its organizational affiliates. The ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the rights of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying Congress and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.

The American Psychiatric Nurses Association (APNA) is a professional association organized to advance the science and education of psychiatric-mental health nursing. It is committed to the specialty practice of psychiatric-mental health nursing, health, wellness and recovery promotion through identification of mental health issues, prevention of mental health problems and the care and treatment of persons with psychiatric disorders.

ASAM supports the treatment of addiction by working to increase access to and improve addiction treatment, educate medical professionals and the public about addiction, and support research on addiction treatment and prevention.

The purpose of the American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA, formerly ANIA-CARING) is to advance the field of nursing informatics through communication, education, research and professional activities.

IntNSA is a professional society dedicated to support the work of nurses in the addiction disorder field including alcohol and other drug dependencies, nicotine dependencies, eating disorders, dual and multiple diagnosis, and process addictions.

The spirituality in Health Care Network (SHCN) was founded in December 2000, in Toronto, Canada. It was unanimously agreed that SHCN would be a bridging network, a forum for spiritually oriented health-care professionals of diverse specialty and training, and spiritual leaders to explore the integration of spiritual traditions and practices into health care.