Kenya Haney has a couple of things in common with President Barack Obama.
Both were on campaign trails in 2008, and though it may have gotten rough at times, both were elected president – Obama, of course, as our nation’s president and Kenya Haney as the 2009-2010 president of the National Student Nurses Association, NSNA.
Haney, 32, of Florissant is a junior enrolled online in the BSN completion program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her election took place last month at the NSNA annual convention in Nashville, Tenn.
The organization mentors and provides professional development to approximately 50,000 student members nationwide through educational resources, leadership opportunities and career guidance.
Haney works at Christian Hospital in the Clinical Decision Unit of the Chest Pain Center emergency room. She works primarily with cardiac patients who are being ruled out as having experienced heart attacks.
Her other rewarding career is as a mother of two and wife to Rico Haney.
By growing up in a family of nurses, including an aunt who induced a strong respect for nursing, Haney knew early on that she wanted to be a nurse who could advocate on behalf of her patients.
“By watching my aunt’s passion for nursing and helping care for her, I knew that I would always become a nurse,” she says.
Haney brings to her new role plenty of leadership experience, an enthusiastic, upbeat attitude, and a resolve to mentor and bring more minorities into the nursing profession. “So many institutions are lacking” in diversity, she said – “and it’s not for their lack of trying.”
“To have that person who has similar cultural beliefs to mentor and guide the new generation of nursing students is essential,” Haney said.
She embraces her new leadership role knowing “it’s a two way street.”
“The mentor and the mentee have to work together,” she said.
Mentees, she said, “have to keep a very open line of communication with their mentors and be held accountable,” because they are the mentors of the future.
“To find a good mentor-mentee relationship is priceless,” Haney said. “And in turn they can become mentors to the next generation to help them move along in their career path.”
Nurse and an officer
Haney combined nursing and leadership at St. Louis Community College–Florissant Valley prior to attending UMSL, serving as treasurer for the SLCC Student Nurses Association and the Saint Louis area district officer for the Missouri Student Nurses Association.
“I started with NSNA as a traditional nursing student, and I joined my local student nurses association at St Louis Community College–Florissant Valley where I got my nursing degree,” Haney said.
“I had a wonderful, wonderful mentor – her name is Nancy Pea, MSN – and she took a group of students to the Missouri SNA. I became intrigued from that one conference alone. I knew that I needed to take a leadership role in nursing associations – even as a freshman in nursing school.”
Haney also assumed leadership positions during her high school days at Parkway West (class of 1995) as a state officer in DECCA, the student marketing organization.
Haney was a residence hall advisor at Mizzou and was elected as the Northern Director of Nominations and Elections Committee for the Missouri Student Nurses Association. After serving her term, Haney started her next successful campaign for Breakthrough Nursing Director.
“It is literally a caucus. You have to campaign – you have to get each state’s support,” Haney said. “You are giving your speeches – you are campaigning.”
The NSNA Breakthrough Program works to bring minority, nontraditional, international students and more youth into the field of nursing.
“The traditional nurse is not representative of exactly what our society looks like,” Haney said.
“We go out and we advocate, we teach, we educate high school students, and elementary school students. We go on college campuses and talk about why it’s so vitally important to consider nursing as a career opportunity.”
Haney’s role will involve extensive travel. In July, she will represent NSNA in the International Council of Nurses in Durbin, South Africa.
“We will discuss what we have in common and our goals – patient care, patient advocacy and nursing rights,” Haney said.
Haney wants to be a positive role model for all nursing students. That, in part, means taking a close look at the resolutions passed by the NSNA House of Delegates to carry those particular resolutions out in full force.
“I have a great Board of Directors to do the legwork to become advocates for nursing students worldwide and in the U.S.,” Haney said.
“We write articles, we give speeches; we send information to policy holders and lawmakers. We like Capitol Hill and we like talking to state legislators at home who can advocate for patients and student nurses, because it all goes back to the patients.”
For Haney, her future may involve law school or advanced degrees in nursing. “There’s a whole enclave of nurses who are health nurse attorneys,” she said.
“My sister is a graduate of Saint Louis University School of Law – it’s just something I’ve been looking into,” she said.
Becoming a legal nurse, she said, would involve a “step out of the clinical aspect of nursing,” but patient care is still the mission.
“You’re still a patient advocate to advocate for their rights legally,” she said.
For now, she is lobbying to keep the nursing force strong, even during the economic downturn.
“It will change – the economy will eventually turn around and the hospitals will be able to hire more nurses,” she said.
“Nursing is a viable career option, and we don’t want people to pull out of nursing school.”
