The Opening Plenary

I wanted to explain a little bit more about the Opening Plenary yesterday by Suzanne Prevost (Who you can follow on Twitter @SuzannePrevost, fyi). The main topic of conversations during this welcome/opening/presidential address was the attitude of gratitude.

I am going to be completely honest, as soon as I saw this first slide I rolled my eyes and was immediately prepared to be asked for a check. I was waiting for the collection basket to come around. The whole thing seemed oddly reminiscent to me of a MegaChurch with a pastor who was looking to swindle his congregation out of their hard earned money. HOWEVER, in the next breath I was corrected, "Gratitude does not just mean your money, although it is helpful." A shift occurred in me because I understand that every organization needs money to run, but it was nice to know that was not going to be the only goal of this speech.

Suzanne went on to talk about a few different ways people can create legacy within their chapter and demonstrate their gratitude beyond the check that they may write. What I think was the best part of her speech was was we were provided with not only things our chapter could do for the larger organization, but for things we could do as a chapter to give back. SOOOOOooOoooOOo....In that light I am going to talk about a few of the organizations that you as an individual reading this, or another chapter who was not able to be here this weekend, can get involved in from the comfort of your own keyboard.

Arguably the most perilous condition facing the underdeveloped and developing world is access to clean water and appropriate sanitation. One of the organizations that is looking to combat this problem is simply called Water.Org. I would love to explain the organization and their main goals more myself, however there is a youtube video that absolutely puts my explanation to shame. So without further ado....check it out...

Yes that is Matt Damon in the video...so for my Boston chapters...."But I mean if you have a problem with that, I mean, we could just step outside--we could figure it out."

And if you are not from Boston please completely ignore my Good Will Hunting reference.

One of the other organizations that the opening plenary challenged the nurses in attendance to get involved with is helping to educate the nurses in Haiti. Currently there are 2 MDs per 10,000 people in Haiti. This means, in simple terms, nurses are the ones who are providing most of the medical care in a country like Haiti. During the devastating earthquake of 2010 the primary school of nursing on the island of Haiti was destroyed and many of the students inside also passed away. If all of these issues had been silo-ed perhaps Haiti would not be facing some of the challenges it is today, but the reality is all of this happened to the same small island nation.

While I was in my workshop session yesterday I had the great pleasure of sitting next to one of the two members of Sigma Theta Tau who is from Haiti herself. She and her colleague Dean Alcindor have begun a campaign to educate the nurses of Haiti. This of course means dollars but fortunately for them school throughout the United States are offering to help in the education process to make it more affordable for the people of Haiti who want to pursue nursing as a career.

Now that I have told you all of this I should direct you to the resource right. So check out the website http://promotinghealthinhaiti.org/ right now. The website makes it simple to donate money to Adopt-A-Nurse for Haiti and for the price of just $5,000 you can ensure that a Haitian nurse receives a quality education to help provide care to the many people who so desperately need it. Can you imagine if nursing school cost $5,000 in this country?? I think there would probably be a lot more people going into the profession...but that is just a guess.

The final thing that I am going to talk about here is a website called Sharecare.com This little website is basically the answer to the country's WebMD problem. The website connects specialty nurses and doctors directly with patients over the internet to help with different chronic medical conditions. The website provides tools that experts in their fields have either developed or sanctioned as appropriate and effective.

 I share this website for two reasons. If you are a hypochondriac or legitimately have a chronic medical condition I encourage you to connect with an expert on the topic and determine if there are any other resources on the website that may be helpful to you. If you are a medical professional and you have a significant amount of experience I challenge you to be one of the many providers who offers up their knowledge to help improve outcomes of patients with chronic diseases.

I left the opening plenary excited to teach everyone about the new organizations I had learned about. I look forward to being able to provide the names of these organizations the next time someone is looking for a charity to give their money to. And with that I am going to work on finishing up my schedule post so everyone knows exactly what my plan is.