The American Academy of Nursing is both an honorific society and a policy organisation. It has inducted fellows since 1973 and now has more than 3,400, drawn from research, practice, administration, education and policy.
Fellows are selected through nomination and review rather than by application, and use the letters FAAN after their names. The credential signals sustained national contribution rather than clinical qualification: it authorises nothing, and it is not a licence or a certification. See nursing specialties.
The policy work
What distinguishes the academy from an honour roll is the second half of its purpose. It runs more than twenty expert panels, each covering a domain such as aging, maternal and infant health, quality, or health equity, and each responsible for turning the research in that area into policy recommendations.
Those panels produce position statements, comment letters to federal agencies, and nominations of nursing experts to federal commissions and advisory bodies. The academy also publishes a policy journal and convenes dialogues that bring nursing evidence into wider health policy debate.
This is the part of nursing's national infrastructure that is least visible to bedside nurses and most consequential in Washington. When a federal rule on staffing, workforce funding or scope of practice attracts nursing comment, the academy is usually among the organisations that filed it.
How it differs from the neighbouring bodies
The American Nurses Association is a membership organisation that anyone eligible may join, and it lobbies on behalf of nurses. The academy is closed, small and selective, and it advances positions drawn from evidence rather than from a membership mandate.
Sigma is the other main honorific body and works at a much larger scale, inducting students and early-career nurses on scholarship and leadership potential rather than electing established leaders.
Confusing the three is common in press coverage, and the practical test is what each can do: the association can lobby with numbers behind it, the academy can convene expertise, and Sigma can fund and disseminate research.
Related
- Nursing organizations
- American Nurses Association
- Sigma
- Nurse staffing and patient outcomes
- The nursing shortage
Sources
- About the American Academy of Nursing. American Academy of Nursing, for its role as an honorific and policy organisation. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Fellowship. American Academy of Nursing, for the number of fellows and the selection process. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- Policy programs and initiatives. American Academy of Nursing, for the expert panels and federal policy work. Accessed September 9, 2026.