AJN’s editor-in-chief watches the nursing profession get a chance to ring the New York Stock Exchange bell, is exhorted to courageous action by critical care nurses in the Big Easy, records a podcast conversation with two nursing leaders.
May is always busy with professional meetings. I attend many of them, scouting out issues, trends, and authors. And then, of course, there’s Nurses Week, with its own flurry of activities.
courtesy of Diane Mancino
Nurses ring the bell! This Nurses Week included a first for nursing: recognition by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Johnson & Johnson’s Campaign for Nursing’s Future was invited to ring the closing bell of the NYSE on May 12, the official end of Nurses Week and the birthday of Florence Nightingale. Andrea Higham and Lorie Kraynak of the J&J campaign, along with Sue Hassmiller (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), Beverly Malone (National League for Nursing), Diane Mancino (National Student Nurses Association), and other representatives of nursing organizations crowded the bell platform to watch the CFO of Johnson & Johnson ring the bell. I watched from the trading floor along with other nurses, nursing students, and organization partners of J&J, whose campaign has raised millions to support nursing education since 2002.
Critical care nurses share knowledge, inspiration. The prior week I was in New Orleans along with 8,000 other attendees at the 43rd National Teaching Institute (NTI), the annual conference of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN). This conference is almost overwhelming rich in offerings and exhibits. Karen McQuillan (photo below, right), AACN’s president, opened the meeting with a presentation focused on her presidential theme, “Courageous Care,” and highlighted the ways nurses display courage every day.
Her successor, Clareen Wiencek (photo below, left), who will take over at the end of June, revealed the theme for her upcoming presidency: “It Matters.” Building on the themes of prior AACN presidents, she noted:
“We know it matters that we care courageously for the sickest and most vulnerable patients and do it in chaotic and ever-changing health systems.”
Wiencek (left), and McQuillan
Wiencek emphasized that what nurses do matters more than ever in such a turbulent time in health care and argued that nurses’ voices need to be heard for the benefit of our patients as well as our own profession.
A podcast conversation. I had the opportunity to chat with both McQuillan and Wiencek about their views about nursing and the organization’s priorities—you can listen to the interview below.
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