What does it mean to put the ANA Code of Ethics into practice when nurses are faced with difficult decisions, competing priorities, and an ever-changing healthcare environment?
On Saturday, September 12, 2026, nurses from across Illinois will come together for the ANA-Illinois Professional Issues Conference (PIC) to explore that question.
This year’s conference will focus on the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics and its role in guiding nursing practice, leadership, advocacy, and professional responsibility.
Throughout the day, attendees will hear from nursing leaders and experts who will move the conversation beyond understanding ethical principles to exploring how nurses can apply them with integrity, courage, and compassion.
And it all begins with a conversation about courage.
Opening PIC 2026: Dr. Lorena B. Smith, DNP, MSN-L, BSN, RN, LNC
We are excited to welcome Dr. Lorena B. Smith as the opening session speaker for PIC 2026.
Dr. Smith will kick off the conference with:
Courage in Action: An Interactive Exploration of Ethics, Conflict, and Leadership in Nursing
Nurses regularly encounter situations where doing the right thing isn’t always easy or straightforward. Ethical challenges can require difficult conversations, confident decision-making, and the courage to speak up, particularly in complex and high-pressure healthcare environments.
Dr. Smith’s interactive opening session will equip attendees with practical strategies and communication skills to confidently apply ethical principles, demonstrate moral courage, navigate conflict, and lead effectively.
Rather than simply discussing what ethical nursing practice should look like, this session will challenge attendees to consider an important question:
How do we have the courage to put our professional values into action when it matters most?
It’s a powerful way to begin a day centered on moving from ethical principles to meaningful action.
Taking Ethics from Principle to Practice
The conversation continues throughout PIC with sessions examining how the Code of Ethics intersects with nurses’ everyday practice, leadership, advocacy, and responsibility to their communities.
Principle to Practice: Making the Code of Ethics Actionable in Everyday Nursing
Ethical principles shouldn’t live only on paper.
This session will explore how nurses can translate the Code of Ethics into the decisions, conversations, and professional challenges they encounter every day.
The Ethical Responsibility to Lead: Why Nurses Must Move Beyond the Bedside
Leadership isn’t limited to an administrative position or job title.
This session will challenge nurses to consider how their knowledge, experiences, and voices can influence healthcare beyond direct patient care and why leadership and advocacy are important extensions of professional nursing practice.
Nurses SHIFT Change: Applying the ANA Code of Ethics Through Humanity, Ethics, Social Justice, and Science
Ethical nursing also requires examining the broader environments and systems affecting patients and communities.
Through the interconnected lenses of humanity, ethics, social justice, and science, this session will encourage attendees to consider how nurses can use the Code of Ethics to help influence meaningful change.
Closing PIC With Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine, PhD, RN
After a full day of conversations around ethics, leadership, courage, and advocacy, PIC will conclude with our closing keynote speaker, Dr. Sabrina Ali Jamal-Eddine, PhD, RN.
Dr. Jamal-Eddine is a health humanities nurse scientist, disability justice scholar-activist, educator, and spoken word poet.
She completed her PhD in Nursing with a certificate in Disability Ethics at the University of Illinois Chicago, where her doctoral research explored the use of spoken word poetry as a form of critical narrative pedagogy to educate nursing students about disability, ableism, and disability justice.
Her work focuses on creating transformative change within nursing education and practice through engaging educational strategies, community-based interventions, and policies rooted in lived experiences.
Dr. Jamal-Eddine has also brought her storytelling to the TEDx stage, delivering a spoken word performance centered on her experiences with xenophobia and Islamophobia.
Her perspective at the intersection of nursing, ethics, disability justice, education, advocacy, and storytelling will provide a thought-provoking conclusion to a day dedicated to examining what ethical nursing practice means today.
Why Attend PIC 2026?
PIC isn’t just an opportunity to hear presentations. It’s a chance to step outside of your everyday responsibilities and engage with issues that directly influence your profession, your patients, and the future of nursing.
By attending PIC 2026, you’ll have the opportunity to:
- Strengthen your ethical decision-making. Explore practical ways to apply the ANA Code of Ethics to real-world nursing situations.
- Build your confidence to lead. Gain strategies for navigating conflict, communicating effectively, and demonstrating moral courage.
- Expand your perspective. Examine nursing through conversations about advocacy, humanity, social justice, leadership, and professional responsibility.
- Learn from nursing thought leaders. Hear from speakers bringing expertise, lived experience, scholarship, and new perspectives to today’s professional issues.
- Connect with the nursing community. Meet and engage with nurses from across Illinois who care about advancing the profession.
- Earn 5.0 continuing education credits. Invest in your professional development while participating in conversations you can carry back to your practice.
Whether you work at the bedside, in advanced practice, education, administration, leadership, public health, or another area of nursing, PIC offers something you can take back to your role.
Start With Courage. Leave Ready to Lead.
PIC 2026 begins with a challenge to practice with courage and ends with a conversation designed to expand how we think about ethics, equity, and the future of nursing.
Everything in between is an opportunity to learn, connect, reflect, and grow.
Don’t wait to reserve your seat. Register for PIC 2026 today and be part of the conversation shaping nursing in Illinois.