AJN Conference: It Won’t Be Your Typical Round of Lectures and Talking Heads

By Diana J. Mason, editor-in-chief emeritus

We at AJN know that there are myriad ways that nurses learn about best practices in care. While we hope you read AJN every month, we know that many nurses would like the opportunity to hear from and talk firsthand with experts in clinical care. On October 4, 5, and 6, you’ll have that opportunity in Chicago at AJN’s first conference: Advancing Excellence in Clinical Practice. This will not be the typical conference where you are lectured to endlessly. The sessions are designed for lots of interaction with participants, in the belief that building sound best practices requires critical analysis of the evidence, local adaptation of idealized approaches to care, and refining what works according to specific circumstances.

Topics span a wide range of clinical and professional topics, such as helping patients (and ourselves) lose weight, critical assessment of patients in crisis, diabetes self-care management challenges, issues in evidence-based practice, why health care reform is relevant for every nurse, and more.

While the conference officially starts the evening of the 4th, there are three exciting pre-conference workshops you can also attend. AJN interim editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy and I will be providing a writing workshop and hope to meet those of you who are interested in learning to write a manuscript for publication. You’ll walk out with an outline of a paper, a query letter, and knowledge of next steps to prepare and submit a publishable manuscript. The other two workshops focus on clinical leadership and caring for hospitalized older adults.

There’s also a call for abstracts of posters that report on quality improvement projects and best practices that nurses have developed, whether singly or with a team of people. Submitters of the two or three of the best posters accepted will be invited to join me and Transforming Care at the Bedside (TCAB) author Amanda Stefancyk in talking about their work at the Monday morning keynote session.

You won’t want to miss the closing session on “Nurses and the Web: Staking Out Your Territory as an Expert in Health Care,” by noted health care journalist (formerly of Time magazine) and blogger Christine Gorman. There are many other exciting sessions and activities, so check it out. I hope to see you there.