Ep 83: Courage to Lead - Former AANA President Dennis Bless, APRN, MS, CRNA

The next episode in our presidential series brings us a conversation with Dennis Bless, APRN, MS, CRNA, who served as AANA president for 2013-14. His financial background provided the organization with a new perspective and that helped make significant changes that still live on today. We’ll hear about his experiences and talk with him about diversity, compensation, relationship-building, reallocation and more.

Read more and get additional resources here: https://beyondthemaskpodcast.com/?p=2469 

Get the CE certificate here: https://beyondthemaskpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Beyond-the-Mask-CE-Cert-FILLABLE.pdf

Today's show schedule: 

3:32 – Today we’re joined by Dennis Bless, CRNA. He shares his career background.

9:32 - The ASA PR campaign that ran as he was taking office.

13:07 – His role with helping rebuild the relationship between the NBCRNA and AANA

15:43 – AANA also knew they had to be clear that the members were the focus.

17:05 – Towards the end of his presidency, they held a recertification summit to bring all the important parties together.

18:31 – The feeling they had when first hearing about the NBCRNA and testing.

24:33 – There was also a diversity summit during his year. Some background on how that happened.

29:19 – The work he did on CEO compensation and evaluation.

31:56 – How they decided to reallocate money and established new by-laws.

35:18 – What were the most valuable leadership lessons learned during his time as president

36:47 – Dennis leaves this message for new CRNAs coming into the profession.

38:12 – If there was any other profession he could chose, what would it be?