AORN Congress 2002 delegate report
Claire Erickson
Forty-Nineth AORN Congress
Anaheim, California
April 21-25, 2002
The 49th AORN Congress was as usual an inspiration and honor to attend. President Sheila Allen welcomed us during the opening ceremony. Our Fox Valley President Nancy Knapp waved her Illinois flag with pride during the Presidents walk. Dr. Scott Jones, the president of the American College of Surgeons thanks all those nurses that have kept him out of trouble and the nurses who bailed him out when he didn’t listen to them. He promised that College of Surgeons would work steadfastly alongside nurses in the future for patient care. He said to remember our mission is to serve, to save lives, and to improve living and dying. Sherron Kurtz, President of the Certification Board of Perioperative Nurses announced that there are currently 35,000 CNOR’s. Those present were asked to stand. An awesome sight to see so many CNOR’s present.
The 2002 Award for Excellence was given to past president Cynthia Spry. She asked each attendee to think about what excellence was to them. She said that four principles have guided her though her career in perioperative nursing: caring, committment, competence, and attitude. When any one of those things is missing, excellence cannot be achieved. The JERRY G. PEERS DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD recognizes an individual who has made a significant contribution to the growth, progress, and welfare of AORN. Margaret Ingebo, RN, was this year’s winner. This 80-plus lady has been retired for over 15 years and is still demonstrating considerable qualities. Her staff said they never wnated to disappoint her so they also strove for excellence.
President Allen talked about rejuvenating our peri-op spirit, making safety, health and welfare of our patients a priority. That takes getting over obstacles like horizontal violence, a process of eating our young. She recounted the story of Samuel Plimsoll, who is credited for naming the Plimsoll line, a line that shows the depth to which a properly loaded ship can still be safe. Plimsoll noticed that many ships sank because they were overloaded. So he did something about it. She compared the story to the present day sinking overloaded healthcare ship, and challenged us to be the individual that can make a difference. She said taht you are valuable. To not let the logs in our life jam the river, but to use them as planks to build a bridge.
The HOT TOPICS during the sessions this year included the PNDS, the Perioperative Nursing Data Set, its use, application, and acceptance. Bariatric surgery’s, CJD and vCJD how to prepare your hospital and OR before you have a need to, ground zero, correct site surgery, and bioterrorism readiness. Of course, they spoke of retention and recruitment, magnet hospital status, pain management, horizontal violence, patient safety, and managed care. There were just not enough hours in the day to attend all the sessions we were interested in.
Dr. Leah Curtain captivated us with her key note talk on shared values for a troubled world. She talked at length about preparing for mass violence. She said one way of preparing is to take better care of ourselves and our colleagues. One way of doing that is to turn to the values helf by good people all over the world. She listed the important values as: love — a willingness to reach out, truthfulness — to speak ones own truth and to listen to others, fairness — justice, freedom, responsibility, tolerance, spirituality, role of wisdom, respect for life, respect for law, honor — of one’s word. She said we can’t change the world, but we can change our little part of it.
The next three main speakers had a common theme in their talks. Reconnecting. With the constant mobile population, people have lots of acquaintances but few refrigerator friends, meaning those that feel comfortable coming into your home and just opening the refrigerator and helping themselves, and you don’t mind one bit. These are close friends and family that love and care about you. They spoke of the worst injury to the heart as loneliness and isolation. We need to share love and receive it, to care for others deeply, to nurture a strong sense of belonging. They felt our friends could not stop bad things from happening to us, but they can be there to hold us up when bad things do happen.
It is easy to get excited about our career and our future as OR nurses when you are a congress, bringing that feeling back home and inspiring other with it isn’t so easy. We need to remember that someone is always watching us. Our colleagues, students, and physicians are looking to us for the right way to do things, the right way to react, the right way to care, Realize that people follow “who” we are, not “what” we are. We need to be our very best.