And It Happens Again

How is it that even in the DR patients are able to crawl into the deepest crevices of my soul and get stuck there?

Today during the clinic I was pulled aside from the elderly Dominican woman I was taking care of to take a look at another patient. One of the NPs on the trip thought the patient may have had syphilis and now the patient was being very quiet and not talking. They decided to grab me because of my background working with STIs and the fact that I was a male.

Let me back track for a second. When I am working full time in Boston I work for a company that focuses on testing and prevention for HIV. I am an ACRN. For those of you that don't know, that stands for AIDS Certified Registered Nurse. I had to take a test and everything to prove that I know sort of what I'm talking about when it comes to HIV. Naturally, before heading to the DR I did a lot of research on the epidemic in the country and found some interesting articles. Originally I was going to try and sneak down a boat load of condoms (male and female) but I was unsure how some of our religious hosts would react so I wanted to meet them and discuss maybe a shipment in the future (more to come on this). I digress, in reading the articles I had this inkling feeling that I may find patients throughout the clinics that had an undiagnosed case of HIV or AIDS given the amount of stigma related to the epidemic in the country. 

I walked over to the young 26 year old Dominican male and introduced myself. I explained that they asked me to come and speak with him because I had a lot of experience in this area. I immediately noticed the spots on the patients hands that the NP thought may be the progression of syphilis, but it didn't really look like syphilis to me. I asked to see the soles of the patients feet which he allowed me to and noticed the same spots. After asking a few questions though, with all of the other female nurses still around, the patient stated that he was not sexually active. 

I then had the other female nurses leave and the patient disclosed a yellow discharge from his penis for about 2 years around the same time the spots started on his hands and feet. I explained that this type of discharge is not usually associated with syphilis and the patient probably had chlamydia or gonorrhea. It was at this point I realized some of the info the patient gave with the female nurses present may not be accurate. I decided to ask the patient questions about sex again. The patient was silent.

It was during this bout of silence that I noticed just how skinny this 26 year old was. I can't imagine that he weighed more than 130 lbs soaking wet and was about 5'10" To break the silence I asked if he was always skinny. He said he had been skinny but had been losing weight recently and he wasn't quite sure why. 

At this point I asked the patient if he ever remembered being sick for a long time, 2 weeks or more with the flu, a fever, or the sweats. The patient remembered an event about two years ago when the discharge began. He complained that he had not slept well for almost a month, he woke up soaked in sweat, and had a really sore throat.

Red flags were finally going off for me and I asked the patient to open his mouth. He had oral thrush. He wasn't a diabetic and he did not use an inhaler which was enough info for me to confirm my suspicions. I asked the patient a third time about his sexual history. The patient told me he did not sleep with women and when I asked him about sleeping with men was completely silent.

Sitting in silence my heart sank into my lower intestines. I was now armed with a lot of very indicative information and no means to provide the patient with the appropriate test, care, or resources. In the US, I could have easily tested the patient and made a quick referral into care and had him on HAART within 2-3 months depending on his mental health status. In the DR, I had nothing but my own prescription of PEP in case I got a needle stick.

By some sort of divine intervention one of the women being seen by one of the other groups informed our NP that she was an HIV counselor/tester/educator at the local hospital. She was actually sitting outside at the time and had a few minutes to chat with me. She provided me with her name and phone number and told me if there were any patients I was concerned about I could have them contact her directly. It was sort of surreal. She is the only HIV educator/counselor in the whole provincial area and she admitted that her knowledge of the virus itself was very limited. I offered, in exchange for her serendipitous help, my email address and the promise of education materials and condoms (more to come).

I returned to my 26 year old and provided him with the woman's name and address. I felt it would be inappropriate to introduce the two given the stigma in the community around the epidemic, but I stressed the importance that he visit the hospital to receive more testing as soon as possible. I was careful not to be specific as I didn't want to cause any mental health issues, but I did want to emphasize the importance of the follow up. After explaining 6 times that the patient needed to go to the hospital he looked at me and froze.

After about 3 minutes of silence he said ¿La prueba es por VIH? ¿Tengo SIDA? or "The test is for HIV?" "Do I have AIDS?". I didn't think it was possible for my heart to sink any lower, but it did. I was honest and explained that I thought he had a lot of symptoms that in the US would indicate the need for an HIV test. I explained that there were medicines available to treat it and that it was important he didn't ignore the things wrong with him because they wouldn't go away they would only get worse and then they may not be as easily able to treat them. He looked at me with understanding and just sat staring blankly for some time. Then he promised he would go to the hospital tomorrow and slowly walked out of the church.

I had wanted to treat his STI and his oral thrush but was advised by the woman who worked at the hospital it was better he go tomorrow symptomatic so that they would understand the need for him to be tested and treated quickly. It bothered me a great deal because I have no way to know whether or not he actually will go in. I have no way to know whether or not his test will be positive (maybe I'm wrong). I have no way to know if he could really get the treatment he needs in his small village without getting completely ostracized.

This is the patient that I will take back with me to the US. This is the patient I will remember when I think about this trip a year from now. This is the patient that will always keep me wondering, "I wonder what happened?"

Clinic...Finally a patient

After being here for what seems like an entire week we had our first clinic today. What is so interesting to me about the clinics here is the fact that the entire process is very reminiscent of the types of clinics that I have in Boston. Basically a big group of nurses travel to a set location in some country side village with a bunch of medical supplies and simply start to see patients. The only difference between here and Roxbury is that all of my patients here speak Spanish and there are no resources for me to connect them to at all.

Prior to the actual first clinic day I questioned the validity of a project like this that truly does not feel sustainable. Is it actually helping the people we are seeing or are we creating more problems? 

After my first day here I have no doubts that I am doing the right thing. We follow the World Health Organization guidelines for caring for individuals in third world countries and some things from my Boston job still ring true even in the DR. Sometimes all people need is a nurse to sit down and listen to all of he problems in their life....even fit he nurse can't fix them. At the end of the day people really just want to know that someone...anyone, even a foreigner who is butchering their language actually gives a shit. It's so simple and so sad that no matter where I go in the world this is a recurring theme. 

We went to two different places today. At the first site indefinitely was getting my bearings, but eventually I got into the swing of things with very little problems. By the time we made it to the second site I was my old Boston van self and patients were opening up to me. An old man actually admitted to me that he was an alcoholic which sounds really stupid but I saw it for what it was, a first....a very important first. 

I also got the chance to go with one of the other nurses to visit a young man, 25 years old, who had polio and needed to be evaluated. The man was contracted but generally in good health. Entering into this small shack to visit this man I was hit with the realization that the basic things for a nurse are still true. I spent a significant amount of time doing education around position changes and chest PT two basic things that whether I was in a hospital in Boston or a shack in the DR were exactly the same. 

The final part of our day had nothing to do with my ability to take care of patients but was still a fairly important nursing job. We unloaded a giant garage of random boxes of donated medications, sorted them, reorganized them in the garage to make them easily accessible, and provided education regarding the supplies to the local church aid organization. So simple, so labor intensive, and so necessary in many ways. 

Part of me was nervous I was going to come to the DR and halfway through the trip be upset at the lack of sustainability for many of the projects we help with, but I'm not at all. I'm pleasantly surprised at the impact we are able to have through education and simple labor that otherwise the people of the DR may not have access to throughout their life. 

That's all for now...this is going to be another post for another time so sorry if it gets loaded with a bunch of others.

An Early Reflection

Sitting on a bus driving through the Dominican countryside I finally have time to think through my experience thus far.

Let me start by talking about for the first time leaving the country it really didn't hit me that I was going until 10 minutes before I was getting in the car to go to the airport. It was a strange experience I had done all of the things to prepare: packed my bags, reorganized my supply bags, got my prophylaxis meds, called the credit card company, but it just didn't really hit me the way it probably should have until I was putting things in the car. I think it's probably because I'm still a little unsure of how things are going to work here. I'm just trying to go day by day with no expectations and go-along-to-get-along until I finally have my bearings.

As far as the actual travel to the DR goes it was pretty simple and easy. The flight was technically not delayed but in reality it left almost 1.5 hours late keeping in perfect form with my international travel experiences (check out anamericaninba.blogspot.com for more info). One crazy thing happened though which may be a bit of bad karma for our trip. The group of 6 people from our trip on our flight each had two bags which were all at the maximum weight limit(most well over 50lbs). The airport staff were very accommodating when we told them what we were doing, however as we were sitting on the runway one of the airport staff informed the whole flight that our plane was not weighted and balanced correctly and was offering $500 for someone to take a different flight to San Juan and then get redirected to santo Domingo for 8 in the morning. I almost took it....If I didn't have my groups money for the taxi I most definitely would have taken it, but I sat on my hands and waited patiently. Eventually no one took the deal and the airline actually picked a name at random to take the deal. I felt awful because the man clearly did not want to change his flight especially when I normally would have taken the deal and I am sure hat our overweight bags were the problem. Such is life I guess, but I am still worried we may have incurred some level of karma that will take a while to repay. Honestly, I'm just hoping the bitch will take payments and won't demand one lump sum.

When we got to the airport it was pretty simple to get through customs. We waited at the airport and helped everyone get phones and then after a breakfast and a batido we negotiated a cab ride to our place and headed out. My first Spanish speaking snafu came in when I thought I had told the driver that we were staying at the Bella Vista and he thought that I meant the street was Bella vista. Eventually we figured it all out and made it to the place. 

After settling in we took a quick walk to the beach. As we were walking to the beach cars and trucks were beepingand shouting...mostly at the girls....one particularly friendly man from the van marked Jesus Cristo El Rey called me a Maricon...I'll let you look that one up but it was a fun welcome to the country.

 We kept walking, no worse for the wear, and I got my first up close view of the ocean. The ocean here is gorgeously bright blue with huge rolling waves. The sun is warm and fantastic after being in the dreary winter or Boston for the last few months. We were accosted by a few locals but I think I'll probably do one whole post on the locals that like to bother the group of us for different things. 

After walking along the water for a while we found a restaurant with an outside patio. We got the local beer, el Presidente, served in a bamboo coozie. I got picadas and papas frites a go-to from my Buenos Aires days and settled in for a typical long Dominican restaurant experience. 

We walked back to the hostel and waited for the other groups to arrive who did without any issues and then went out for another dinner. Another typical Dominican dinner that turned into a welcome beer and chatting session. We even got a piece of cake with dulce de leche and a little song because the waiter liked us and said it was one of our birthdays. Well that is all I have for now. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to post this tonight but either way I've written the post and it's what I'm thinking now so even if I have to post it retroactively it will not be retroactive thoughts.

                                 

The Bostonian Heads to the DR

And here we are again....Sigma Theta Tau Gamma Epsilon chapter is sponsoring me to go on another trip. This time I'm headed to the Dominican Republic with Intercultural Nursing!! Well I'm actually already here. We have had quite the adventure so far but I'm happy to report everyone is here and we made it with all of our luggage.

Let's go over the basics of the trip. A group of nurses, nursing students, nurse practitioners, and nurse practitioner students all go to the Dominican Republic and bring a bunch of medical supplies, set up shop at a different site every day for two weeks and just see patients. It's a very similar mobile health model to the company I work at in the US. 

Our first day we spent at a hostel in the capital and we are about to head out to our first area of the island. Here we will reorganizing our supplies and get ready to see the patients. 

I've already done and seen so much here and I've only been here for a few hours. What I'm most amazed by is how quickly my Spanish is coming back. I'm considered one of the Spanish speakers and the staff at restaurants usually identify me to speak with them. Now we are eating breakfast and getting a little pep talk from our leader .

Moving forward I'm not sure what my internet access is going to be like but I'm going to try and at least blog retroactively. I may try to write another blogger-type reflective post on the first day of the trip and my culture shock getting here but for now I should finish breakfast and get ready to get in the bus.

Chau!!! 

House of Delegates Part Deux

My taste of Indianapolis yesterday supplied me with just enough energy to go back to the hotel that night and pack so that I would be prepared to check out bright and early in the morning and head over to the convention. My plan of course was to head from the convention to the Indianapolis airport so that I could make my 7pm flight with no issues. Like many things in my life I may have been a little over zealous....none the less, better ready than a mess I always say.

I arrived bright and early at the second delegation meeting and stowed my one carry-on beneath my feet in case things ran long. However, much like the previous day things seemed to move at a good pace and we made great timing during the actual delegation procedures.



Mary and I happily cast our votes and helped amend 5 by-laws by an overwhelming majority! A lot of major changes didn't occur to the by-laws, most just clarifying some already existing procedures. However, one new thing that the by-laws created was a way to stagger the executive officer positions of the International organization to ensure that one member of the board from the existing biennium is still on the panel of executive officers. A nice change that will help with continuity of leadership.

The next order of business was the announcement of all of the new chapter officers and the ceremonial exchange of the Sigma chain, or as I like to call it the Passing of the Bling! Once again everything moved rather quickly. I think the most important of the election results was probably the election of Cathy Catrambone as the President-Elect for the next Biennium.

After thanking all of the outgoing officers and the installation of all of the incoming officers, we moved on to the new President Hester Klopper's Call to Action. I am going to go into this in more detail in a post all its own so I am going to move on for now. When all was said and done...we had amended the by laws, adopted the resolutions, sworn in our new officers, and it was finally time for our meeting to come to a close. As soon as the meeting was adjourned a group of women and men from the Tau Lambda-At-Large Chapter presented us with a fun and heartwarming dance. It was a celebration and what a way to end the Second Part of the House of Delegates and start a new Biennium!

House of Delegates Part 1

Today was the first day of the House of Delegates. I was really excited and nervous to see just how things were going to play out and what I would actually be required to do. When I walked in, the tables were set up from the front of the room all the way to the back of the giant ballroom with two chairs at each table.

The task of trying to find where myself and Mary Carney should be sitting seemed daunting to say the very least. There was clearly a method to the madness as their were charts explaining where a given number should be seated. However, I had no idea how exactly we were supposed to figure out what our corresponding number might be. Luckily, one of the STTI staff members, who had been following our twitter and therefore knew our chapter name (@GammaEpsilonNU if you haven't seen it yet yourself) pointed us in the right direction.

Apparently the chapters are seated in order of their induction into STTI. We were number 75! I had no idea. I was super excited to have such good seats though and was really proud to know that I came one of the first 100 chapters...

At every table there was also a set up with a few STTI mints, a voting machine with a card with the name of your chapter, and a little placard also displaying your chapter name. The yellow card that you can see if the "Golden Ticket" that gave every person who had one in their possession access to a ballot to vote in the 2013 delegation.

The machine, much like trying to find our place in the sea of tables and chairs seemed daunting, but after only a few seconds it became very self explanatory, 1= Yes and 2=No. Could it get any simpler really?

The meeting was called to order and things began to get real fast! We were quickly breezing through the agenda with very little discussion or questions about the candidates or the process. Before I knew it we were through the candidates and being handed a ballot to cast our votes via pencil and paper. Mary and I worked diligently to make the best decisions we could for the International part of the organization and were ultimately quite happy with the way our ballot turned out.

After lunch we returned back to the delegation room where we were introduced to the different resolutions and by-law amendments that would be discussed the next session. Nothing overly exciting happened here except for one rousing speaker who wanted a resolution to honor the male and female nurses who had served in the Civil War. The President, Suzanne Prevost, assured the speaker that a task force would be developed to look into the issue further and we were quickly moving through the agenda once again.

An introduction was then made to one of 30 credentialed Parliamentarians in the world who would be overseeing the next days discussions on the by-law amendments. We also got to have a little practice session with the electronic clickers. To be honest I was quickly transported back to my Anatomy & Physiology class where the professor use to use electronic clickers to determine if we were all paying attention. Fortunate for me I was paying attention more this time than I think I had been in A&P. Before I knew it we were heading out of the first session of the House of Delegates and preparing for a second field trip....more info to come!

An Unexpected and Exciting Shove in the Right Direction

Yesterday I decided to attend one of the workshops that was sort of outside of my traditional interests. It was all about adolescents. The first presenter talked about school based health center and teens access to reproductive health services at the centers and the second presenter spoke about the use on online social networking sites for teens to communicate and interact with each other and strangers. Even though I hadn't anticipated it both presenters spoke about topics that were 100% relevant to my practice.

I work for a mobile health program in Boston that does clinics throughout the Boston and MA area to offer people in the community free HIV/STI screenings, linkage to healthcare, and medical case management. In recent weeks my program in particular has seen a rather large increase in the numbers of adolescents that we are serving, mostly 15-18 year olds. Being able to hear some of the strategies these women employed through the health centers and through their online modeling was both interesting and though provoking for me.

I began asking questions about the teens use of others apps and things that were completely relevant to my practice. Tools my organization already uses to do outreach to the MSM population. It appeared according to both of my speakers that no one was doing that kind of research. Then something strange happened and they both wanted to speak with me afterwards.

Now this wasn't particularly unusual as a lot of the presenters wanted to speak with people after their presentations. However, what was unusual was one presenters willingness to speak with me for well over one hour.

I am not going to give a name as I want to respect people's privacy, I'm sure she had no idea she was talking to the guy keeping the blog. The woman however, spoke with me at great length about how to take my idea and make it into a full-fledged research proposal. She encouraged me to tease out the problems, determine funding sources, and pushed me to simply begin the research.

Then she continued to ask me questions and advise my education. She gently nudged me to go back to school for PhD in Nursing. This is by no means a new concept for me as many of my nursing professors and deans have told me that this is the path I should take. What was different this time is that this woman did not know who I was from a hole in the wall. Based on my questions, my brief conversation with her, and my enthusiasm/concern for the topic I was asking questions about she determined that I had no other choice than to go back to school as soon as possible because, "those kids need you."

The whole situation caused a temporary feeling of anxiety and being completely overwhelmed. Someone outside of my nursing world in Boston had just affirmed everything everyone else had been telling me for almost a year. And the only concern she left me with was, "Am I too young?" She and the other professors I have don't seem to think so but I can't help but feel this is still somewhat out of reach for someone like me. I just graduated and passed my boards in May. I have only been an RN for 7 months. I know this is a silly concern, but I wanted to be "just" a nurse for longer before I went back and started the process of getting my PhD.

There are still other things I want to do and research, but I realize that it would be much easier to do if I simply had the better degree. I did what all grown-ups do....and called my mother. I told her about the wonderful nurse I had met and how she had encouraged me to go back and my mother in her infinite wisdom was able to calm me down. "Well you just have to take it piece by piece you can't do everything all at once. I knew this was going to happen. These people have all been doing this for years...they did their nursing and now they do that along with the research. There is nothing wrong with taking your time." Thank God for our mothers sometimes.

I guess that this situation is one of the benefits of a big conference like this. The nurses with more experience mentor and encourage the nurses with less experience to go back to school, to continue to do research, and to continue to improve the profession. I am truly grateful to be here and I am truly thankful that I met that nurse yesterday because I definitely needed the outside affirmation that nursing and an eventual PhD were all things that should be on my radar screen!

A Pretty Purple Banner

Today was the day that we received our first Chapter Key Award!! It was an exciting day to say the least. Mary Carney, Gamma Epsilon Chapter President, and myself could not have been more excited or proud to accept this great honor from STTI today. To be one of the 78 AMAZING chapters to be accepting Key Awards was very cool to say the least.

The different accomplishments of each of the other chapters being read aloud gave me a great understanding about the kind of company we were actually privileged to be a part of this year. Mary and I discussed at length that I really do think that this could just be the beginning for our chapter. Being at the Biennial Convention this year I have acquired an understanding about the ways to properly communicate all that our chapter does to the STTI community at large. I think the biggest barrier in the past with our chapter is not necessarily making sure that we do amazing things, but being able to let others know about the amazing work that we are doing.

So the wheels are in motion to make sure that something similar to this happens again, but in the meantime I will most certainly enjoy the picture of the president and myself proudly holding onto our chapter's accomplishment.

Region 15---The North American Northeast---AKA The BEST!!

It doesn't look like much but that is a map of North America Region 15 of STTI. The region encompasses the states Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts(what?! what?!), New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Nova Scotia. We are a pretty interesting bunch to say the least. The best thing about having a meeting of just Region 15 folks is that I finally got to see some people who did not have a Southern Drawl! I know that might sound silly, but there are only so many colloquialisms about a rabbit that I can hear before I miss a good Southie Accent, or an Eh?

Our Region is currently presided over by Valerie Sauda who is a wonderful geriatric nurse from Maine. She is funny, kind, and knowledgeable. While in the regional meeting I felt good listening to her speak about the Region as a whole because she truly had a sense of the issues throughout the region and the wonderful accomplishments the different chapters in the region had achieved. 

Speaking of the accomplishments of Region 15....I was really impressed. I always knew that we had many great schools of nursing in the Northeast, but the idea that 6 of the 78 Chapter Key Awards were from our region (Gamma Epsilon included!!!) and one of those chapters was receiving a Chapter Key Award for the 10th time I could not believe it!! Everyone in the room was so impressive and it was nice to be amongst people who understood the shared issues in our geographic area; snowstorms, ice-covered highways, and freezing temperatures. 

Beyond the Chapter Key Awards I learned that there are three women running from Region 15 for some form of international leadership position. Not only do we have amazing chapters in Region 15, but the leaders from those chapters that we are able to produce are equally as fantastic. 

Another part of the Region 15 meeting was the review of some of the events that had gone on in the past 2 years. The highlight was our regional research conference held at Salve Regina University. Between the mansions, ocean, and nursing research how could you possibly beat our regional research conference??

One of the most fun parts of the Region 15 meeting for me was the sharing of ideas to increase chapter engagement with its members and the community at large. The creative ways some members were reaching their philanthropic goals including: bring a canned good to the meeting, do a clothing/emergency bag collection for DCF, or even help with fundraising efforts for other organizations were all impressive and simple. Learning about the video one chapter created to explain to potential new members exactly what STTI is and what its members do was an innovative way to get new students excited about their potential membership. 

Ending the meeting I took away a few ideas and desires. Primarily, my desire to become more involved in such an active region and be partners with some of the long term (is that better than old time?) Sigma Theta Tau members grew at least 10 fold just from the Region 15 meeting. I could not be happier to be from North America Region 15.. 

My Schedule

I have been trying to come up with a really cool way to show everyone my schedule, but I have FAILED....MISERABLY FAILED....several times now so you are all just getting a list by day...sorry bout it.

November 17th, 2013

I am going to start with the awards ceremony today since a great deal of these events have already happened and there is no point in me tell you what I have already done.

I am going to go to the Poster Session during the Concurrent B session today to see exactly what kinds of research some of the other members are doing.

12:30-1:45 I will be going to the Tribute Awards.
1:45-2:15 I'm going to get over to the Exhibit Hall to catch the 7 Circle Tips Everyone Needs to Know...I figure as a webmaster I should probably figure those out.
2:45-4 Concurrent Session C I am going to check out an HIV and Spirituality workshop.
4:15-5:15 I have my Region 15 meeting which will be nice to meet the other folks in my area.
5:30-6:15 The International Induction Ceremony

And then I think I am going to call it a day.

November 18th, 2013

8:30-9:45 The 3rd Opening Plenary
10:00-11:15 I am going to check out the workshop on substance abuse in rural hospitals
11:30-12:45 I am going to be at the Chapter Awards Recognition
1:45-3:00 There is a workshop on high school students and online relationships that sounds really interesting
3:15-4:00 There is a Chapter Leader Session
6:30-9:00 is the Founders Awards

I'm definitely going to go home and pass out after that one!

November 19th, 2013

8:30-9:45 A workshop in increasing male students experiences in nursing school...for obvious reasons I want to hear this one I think.
10:00-11:15 There is a workshop on Abuse in Women which looks pretty interesting

11:30-3:30 The first House of Delegates Session

And then I am taking the rest of the night off to have a nice dinner and sleep and blog.

November 20th (My last day)

8:00-2:00 Is the Final House of Delegates Session

Then I will be off to the airport.....So there it is folks...a look at my schedule for the week. Let me know if you think there is anything I am missing or anything that you want to hear more about.

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.

Take Off and Arriving

Well two planes and a bus later and I have finally arrived in Indianapolis. Honestly it wasn't that bad. I ended up sleeping a bit on the plane from Boston to Charlotte and I made it in plenty of time to catch my connecting flight from Charlotte to Indianapolis. Not much to report about the flight as my neighbors on the first one were both kind of grouchy but quiet and my neighbors on the second one were asleep.

One of the really cool things about my flight from Charlotte to Indianapolis was the fact that a lot of the people on the plane, men and women, were coming to the same conference as me. They all had posters, laptops with presentations, or even STTI gear (sweatshirts and t-shirts and stuff). I've never been in such close quarters with so many nurses at one time. I was confident that if someone started to die on the plane I could probably stay in my seat and one of the several other nurses on board the flight would jump into action.

Again on the bus from the airport to the hotel I was surrounded by nurses. One who was running for a leadership position, one who was a professor in Georgia, another who directed a hospice agency in North Carolina, and still another who was a brand new graduate in an ER in Atlanta. One of the coolest experiences so far is seeing just how many different nurses, from different fields and experience levels are here. The best part about the whole thing though is there is absolutely no sense of the lateral violence that you often hear about with nurses, its actually quite the contrary. Everyone is so nice and genuinely interested in what you do when you are not upending your life and heading to Indiana to meet some of the nursing leaders from around the globe.

I thought I was going to be really intimidated while I was sitting on the plane, but as soon as I started talking to other nurses on the bus all of that went away. Everyone here brings their own special set of skills and we all have something offer to the collective group.

I guess I should get going though because the opening plenary is about to start and I am sitting here drinking a Starbucks Iced Coffee and blogging instead of taking my seat and being social. I will put together another post later tonight about registration and my first few hours exploring the convention center. I’m also going to try and put together a mini schedule link so everyone knows what sessions I will be attending and when in case there is anyone out there interested in sharing some ideas. Well now I’m really running late so….Bye for now!!

Preparing for the Trip

How do you prepare to go to an international nursing convention? I got my brochure in the mail (pictures to follow) and its about 50 pages long and the pages are almost the size of a newspaper. It has all the information I am supposed to need as a delegate going to Indianapolis. However, the more I read about the amazing candidates for the leadership positions I am going to be voting the more nervous I am becoming.

I am not even in the same league as any of these folks. I just graduated in May and have been working as an RN since I passed my boards(also in May) but all of the people in this brochure have been nurses for a minimum of 10 years and have at least a Master's Degree. I guess that is why they are running for leadership positions though. I just hope that I am prepared to discern which one is going to be the best candidate for the job they are running for at this time. Thank goodness Mary is going to be arriving for the voting meetings so I have someone else who can help truly investigate who the best candidate for the position is based on both their experience and leadership capabilities.

More than just wanting to make the right choices while voting I have NO idea how I am supposed to be dressed for an event like this. Do I need to wear a shirt and tie every day? Is a nice sweater and a decent pair of pants enough? Are jeans acceptable attire for the break out sessions? I can't believe these are the things that I worry about, but there is not much worse than being selected as a delegate and representing your chapter looking like a schlub. My poor carry-on is stuffed to the brim with clothes of varying degrees of fanciness and I suppose I will determine how I should dress based upon my first assessment when I show up for registration tomorrow.

Then of course there are the general stressors of traveling: Will I be on time for my flight? Will I have to sit next to someone annoying on the plane? Will I make my connecting flight? Will I be able to navigate the shuttle from the airport to the hotel without totally mucking it up? Will the hotel have WiFi? Will the walk from the hotel to the convention center be manageable? Will the weather be okay? Have I packed clothes appropriate for bad weather? Where should I eat?

I swear the list of things to be concerned about grows exponentially every day. Luckily, I am excited enough about being able to attend such a big event that all of those stressors seem completely manageable.

I think my next post probably won't occur until I am actually in Indiana, but you never know....maybe I will get bored at the airport. I'm now off to get ready because I am leaving my place at 3AM to make it to the airport for my 5AM flight (hopefully I will sleep on the plane).

That's all for now and remember to find us on Twitter and Facebook!!

Why Indianapolis??

Well I guess I should start by introducing myself. My name is Justin Alves and I am the fairly new webmaster of the Gamma Epsilon Chapter of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. The Gamma Epsilon chapter calls Northeastern University its home and I was chosen as one of the two lucky delegates to represent the chapter at the 42nd Biennial Convention of the STTI Honor Society of Nursing in Indianapolis this year. 

I am very excited to attend my first INTERNATIONAL nursing conference and thought that a blog along with our twitter account @GammaEpsilonNU would be a good way to allow my fellow Gamma Epsilon chapter members the ability to spy on the goings on of the convention and get an inside look at what its like to be a delegate. I will be updating the blog at least daily so keep a look out for some of the different posts. I am going to try and focus on the events sponsored by STTI, but I will definitely be making a post or two about the trip in general including Indianapolis. 

I've actually never been to Indiana before and I am excited to get to experience not only my first big nursing convention, but to also see a new city in the US. If anyone has anything in particular that they want to see on the blog or a specific medium they would like me to use (pictures, videos, writing, or some random social networking site) please let me know. 

I look forward to keeping you all in the loop!!