Many exciting things are happening at the Society of Trauma Nursing as we enter 2007.
ANNUAL CONFERENCE
The 10th Annual Conference, Innovations & Outcomes, will take place on Saturday, March 24 to Sunday, March 25 2007 at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. As we grow as an organization, we continue to evolve the annual conference to meet the needs of trauma nurses. Conference evaluations are vital and we always listen. Based on this feedback, we will be providing a 2-day conference. Day 1 will offer tracks that provide varied topics to address specialty groups or issues. I think you will be pleased with the wide range of speakers. All of the STN special interest groups have been involved in the planning of sessions so that we can more fully present topics that are of interest to all of our members. The deadline for abstract submission was moved up so that we had more time to evaluate them and to notify all authors. Once again, we selected cutting-edge concepts for oral presentations by the authors. Trauma Outcomes and Performance Improvement Course (TOPIC) will also be presented as a preconference workshop.
If you really want to experience the heart and soul of our organization and participate in networking with your peers from across the country as well as international colleagues, you must attend this exciting event.
STN/EAST COLLABORATION
On January 16-20, STN will once again collaborate with the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST) to provide educational programming that is of interest to both nurses and physicians. The conference will be held at the Sanibel Harbor Resort and Spa in Fort Myers, Florida. STN will be programming 3 Sunrise Sessions and we have increased the number of parallel sessions to 2. TOPIC will also be presented as a full-day workshop. This is an opportunity to visit sunny Florida in January, learn more about STN, experience the EAST conference, and participate in stimulating educational sessions with your physician colleagues. We will once again be hosting an evening reception that will be open to all nurses in attendance.
ATCN (ADVANCED TRAUMA CARE FOR NURSES)
There were a total of 120 ATCN provider courses scheduled for 2006 with a projected attendance of 1,199 providers. Sixteen instructor courses were scheduled for 2006: 12 in the United States, 3 in Saudi Arabia, and 1 in Sweden, bringing a total of 127 instructors trained this year.
In addition, 9 new site startups were scheduled for 2006:
TRAUMA OUTCOMES AND PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT COURSE
This year, TOPIC will be at 2 national conferences, EAST in January and our annual conference in March. Since 2003, STN has facilitated 40 TOPIC workshops with greater than 1,400 total attending. The course focus is broad based for trauma-related individuals, along with trauma program managers, trauma registrars, hospital performance improvement staff, emergency directors and administrators, and regional systems-based staff.
MEMBERSHIP
We are continuing to build a strong network of State and Region Chairs. In 2006, we approved Tracy Evans as the Region I Chair as well as 5 State Chairs:
Kathy Noll-Maryland
Cindy Baldwin-South Dakota
Monica Titus-New Jersey
Pam Golden-Missouri
Laura Crawford-Massachusetts
If you are interested in serving in this capacity, contact Janice Delgiorno at mailto:[email protected] or go to the STN Web site and complete an application.
New membership brochures are available and can be obtained from the National Office. These are great to distribute to key trauma nurses in your organization and at local and regional conferences. The STN display is also available from your STN Regional Chair.
OTHER NEWS
* We are pleased to announce that we have passed the 1-year anniversary working with The Center for Association Growth as our management firm. Through this agreement, we have been able to increase our service to our membership and to continue to evolve and grow as a society.
* The next goal of STN is to redesign our Web site to increase its flexibility and usefulness. Look for improvements soon!
* The Board has been working on a 2-year business plan to better evaluate our organization and to ensure that we continue to improve, remain financially healthy and grow to better serve the needs of the membership.
We continue to be very interested in your comments and questions and we try to respond as quickly as possible to any requests. E-mail the office at mailto:[email protected] or call us at 847-657-6745.