From The President

March 26, 2012

Welcome back from Spring Break:

I hope everyone is well rested from their break and ready for the last push toward the end of the school year. As you are planning for the summer, I hope that you will allow some time for educational opportunities that are available for you. There are two that I would like to highlight.

The first one is the National Association of School Nurses conference which will be held in San Francisco this summer, June 23-26th. Advocacy, Access, Achievement: Making the Connection is all about bringing people together for four days of education, networking and exhibits. Whether you are a longtime NASN member or a new member, you won’t want to miss this opportunity to reconnect with old friends and colleagues and make new ones in the school nursing community. I would love to have you join us for this wonderful experience.

The second one I would like to highlight is the Arkansas School Nurses Association conference on July 24th, at Arkansas Children’s Hall A & B. Our topics include recognizing the signs and symptoms of concussion, how to manage emergency triage in the school setting (SETT), and Paula Smith will be there with a State update and question and answer session.

The School Emergency Triage Training (SETT) program that will be provided is a NASN sponsored training that will teach school nurses how to manage mass emergency situation at your school. While nurses do not want to have to deal with these situations, the reality is that a situation like this could happen in any of our schools. We need to be prepared. This training will give you the tools you need to put a plan in place at your school. There is much more information about this training on the NASN website. Go to www.nasn.org and click on the SETT Training link on the left hand side of the page.

The registration forms for the conference and renewing membership for both ASNA and NASN are on the website: www.arksna.com. Please print the registration and agenda, fill them out and send them in with the appropriate payment as soon as possible so that we can have enough materials available for the SETT training. If you have any question please feel free to contact me, Valerie Beshears 479-597-0430. I look forward to seeing all of you in July.

Valerie Beshears, MSN, RN, NCSN

President ASNA

(479)629-4001 (Work)