Policy Agenda

We Advocate for What Matters

Each year the AORN board of directors establishes a policy agenda based on recommendations from the National Legislative Forum. The Government Affairs team pursues these goals in legislative and regulatory arenas nationwide.

Our team collaborates with health care colleagues, organizations, and decision-makers to advance patient safety and health care improvements in all operative settings, but we don’t endorse specific candidates.

Policy Agenda

AORN Mission, Vision and Values

AORN Government Affairs seeks opportunities for federal and state health policy to align with AORN''s mission, vision and values to better support and advance perioperative practice and patient safety.

Perioperative Safety and Workplace Support

Surgical Smoke Evacuation

AORN leads efforts to enact laws requiring facilities to adopt and implement policies addressing evacuation of surgical smoke for all smoke-generating procedures to prevent ongoing exposure to the hazardous carcinogenic and mutagenic cells contained in surgical smoke and to ensure the health and safety of all surgical team members.

Culture of Safety

AORN encourages legislative and regulatory efforts to establish an accountable, trusting patient safety culture in the perioperative setting, including robust whistleblower protections for health care providers and mandatory reporting of safety incidences. In addition to surgical smoke-free operating rooms, perioperative nurses deserve fatigue prevention resources, strong workplace violence protections, safe patient handling programs focused on injury prevention, and protections from prosecution for medication errors.

Perioperative Practice Issues

  • RN Circulator: AORN works to ensure every surgical patient has a dedicated perioperative registered nurse circulator for the duration of each operative and invasive procedure. Our team also actively promotes laws and regulations to ensure the supervisory presence of the perioperative RN in the perioperative setting.
  • RN First Assistant: AORN supports the expanded role of the RNFA by actively working to achieve reimbursement parity for RNFAs. RNFAs work in collaboration with the entire surgical team to achieve optimal patient outcomes nationwide and yet private payer reimbursement is only guaranteed in 17 states.
  • Professional Practice: AORN protects the perioperative registered nurse 's scope of practice and patient safety by engaging in legislative, regulatory, agency, and other stakeholder approaches to RN education, certification, supervision, roles, competencies, and duties.