News and Information

Joyce Benjamin, Executive director of the Arizona Nurses Association, spoke at our January meeting about key provisions within the House and Senate bills and how they compare. She encourage nurses to advocate for health insurance reform.

Chapter Events

Our next meeting will be a tour of the St. Michaels Association for Special Education in St. Michaels, AZ, on the Navajo Reservation. This is a very impressive facility which has outreach into the large community. We will meet on Thursday, July 22 at St. Michaels. On Friday we will tour Monument Valley in the am and meet with a Navajo family in the evening. Members are free to sightsee as they wish on the weekend.

Network Statement

The Arizona Chapter of DDNA prides itself on advocating, educating, and celebrating the unique and specialized role of the nurses who serve the people with developmental disabilities. Our nurses come from several area of nursing, including administration, case management, school nursing, foster care and home health care with direct patient contact.

Our mission is to promote recognition, credibility and excellence of DD nursing as a specialty in Arizona, to provide opportunities to participate in educational topics and issues inherent to the needs of the DD population, and to address the common concerns, needs and perspectives within diverse geographic areas in Arizona and advocate for the varied roles nurses play in this specialty.

Our goals are: 1) to increase membership by reaching out to professionals in related areas, such as physical, occupational and speech therapy, rehabilitation, schools and hospitals; and 2) to create more than one Arizona Chapter in order to best serve the nurses and other professionals in various areas of the state.

Why Our Chapter is Special

Since 2004 we have had excellent speakers present topics as enlightening and diverse as RSV, long term ventilation, dementia in the DD population, biofeedback with DD clients, psychopharmacology, grief recovery approaches, genetic anomalies, microaspiration, Native American perceptions of health, wellness and illness and medical ethical issues. We have also learned from professionals about new approaches to epilepsy, autism, brain trauma, ADHD, wound care, and various therapeutic interventions such as myofascial release therapy, sensory integration and horse therapy.

We hold meetings on the second Saturday every third month. We offer in-service credits for each meeting attended and, in the future, will be able to offer DDNA continuing education credits.

If you are a nurse who is motivated and eager to learn, and who wants to advocate for the enhancement of care for the I/DD population in our state, we welcome your questions and interest in the AZDDNA. Please contact us!