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The Newsletter of the South Central WOCN Region WOCN |
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July, 2010 |
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Jill Conwill
National Conference was a great place for networking this year. We had almost 60 members at our regional meeting this year. Last year due to the cost of catering we didn’t have any food or drinks but this year WOCN set up salad, pizza, breadsticks along with tea and water for all regions. It was very nice of them to provide this for the membership.
The conference center was huge! Unfortunately several of the breakout session rooms were not quite big enough so there were several overflow rooms utilized. This year national went “green” but not without a few glitches. The link for the handouts went out only a couple of days before the conference and they were set up to allow members to print out handouts onsite but the first day was definitely a learning process. The link wouldn’t open; they ran out of paper, there weren’t enough stations set up…these problems were fixed before the day was over but it was frustrating for many. Next year should be better.
Meeting nurses from other continents was interesting. One nurse from Great Britain said we were “barbaric with our ostomy care”. They don’t teach their patients to empty their pouches…they just change them. Socialized medicine allows them to use as many pouches as they need. There were vendors that were only in Europe so we were able to see what types of appliances they used. Similar to what we use but not available in the U.S.
The Membership Committee is going to be making changes to the website to make it more user friendly. Things that will be addressed: improving accessing regions, revamping the Forums (there may be just one Forum for all), membership renewal will be a “forcible” registration process which makes everyone update their information before they can renew each year. Dea Kent is the chair of this committee and would love to hear from the members if there are things they would like to see added, changed or improved. You can contact her at dea.kent@mail.com .
As I said earlier the place was huge!!! The Poster Presentations were in the same room that the exhibitors. Congratulations to our members that presented posters at national conference this year: Anita Prinz had two posters, Bonnie Alvey, Dianne McCollum, Jeannie Thompson, Jill Conwill, Jocelyn Goffney, Lee Anne McWhirt, Kathy Camp, Leslie Everett, Mary Josepha O’Brien, and Tina Meyers had 5 posters. Jeannie Thompson was awarded the SCR Poster Presentation Scholarship at the regional meeting on June 12th. We honored last year’s SCR Award winners at our booth in Exhibit Hall by displaying their photos and the awards that they received.
Congratulations to our 2010 Beverly G Hampton Memorial Scholarship recipient. Mary Brown is currently attending the WebWOC On-line Program. She is the Program Director of an Out-Patient Wound Center at Muskogee Community Hospital in Oklahoma.
Rebecca Garcia, currently our PR Chair, is moving back east so she recruited Bette Kussmann to fill in for her for the rest of the year. Yes, you heard right BETTE is BACK! Welcome back home Bette. If you have any fund raining ideas contact Bette.
Fall Conference will be in Little Rock, Arkansas – September 16-18. Check out the SCR website for more information. Plan to arrive prior to 6 pm on Thursday so you don’t miss the 6 pm opening session. There will many new vendors this year and great topics. We are changing the structure of the meeting so plan to come and check it out.
We also need nominations for new officers: President, Treasurer and Nominations Chairperson. If you are interested in becoming more active in your region please contact Tina Meyers @ tina_meyers@hchd.tmc.edu . Nominations are also needed for our 2010 Awards: Outstanding SCR-WOCN of the Year, Educator of the Year, Rookie of the Year, and Manufacturer/Representative of the Year. Nomination forms are located on the www.scrwocn.org website. |
