This is always a very exciting time of year for Plastic Surgery. For those of you attending the national meeting, it is a great time to reconnect with colleagues from across the United States or meet new ones. Your planning committee has worked many hours to bring you a dynamic offering of educational opportunities. I hope you will take advantage of all they have to offer. We appreciate all the effort they have put into this meeting. All of the credits earned at the meeting are plastic surgery content. Safety credits will be marked so you will know if you attend that session it will count. I note these because we have an ongoing issue with plastic surgery content in our renewal packets for CPSN.
There is somewhat of a gray area when calculating hours for your renewal when we look at diagnosis such as obesity and actual plastic surgery content such as panniculectomy, wound healing, VAC dressings. A nutritional conference on obesity or diabetes is not specific to the specialty of Plastics. Your CPSN credential states that you are an expert in the field of plastic surgery, thus we are somewhat rigid when we look for this content in renewal packets. This will be a topic for board discussion at our annual board meeting in Boston. We welcome input from members on this topic. Feel free to let us know your thoughts.
The PSNCB board members will be working with CNET on Thursday before the start of the meeting to review information obtained in the recent survey you received. This data is needed as part of the ABNS (American Board of Nursing Specialty) process. We are hoping to have a timeline for the upcoming year to complete this process. I will keep you posted on that.
Also, we are very excited to be offering a CPSN happy hour on Friday evening. This is our way of recognizing you as a CPSN. You should be proud of your accomplishment and we want to acknowledge you in a special way. Thanks to Lindsay DeSantis and the National Office for helping us get this off the ground.
And finally, please use the energy that comes with this time of year to pick something and get involved. There are so many opportunities that are available that you do not have to attend the meeting to be affiliated with. Watch the newsletters, the ASPSN website. Committees are always looking for volunteers. The majority of the work for all these things is done remotely. It is a great opportunity to network!
Enjoy the changing weather and beautiful colors of fall!
Jacqueline Frazee, RNFA, BSN, CNOR, CPSN
President, PSNCB