The evaluations are in and by all indications, our CASN conference was a great success!
Our keynote speaker Kate King delivered a wonderful opening and got us all thinking about how we can let our voices be heard and toot our own horns. She pointed out that the Future of Nursing 2020-2030 report mentions school nurses 58 times! WE are at the forefront of nursing!
We heard Nick Thompson, one of the funniest and most engaging speakers I have heard in a long time. He changed our perspective on helping students with anxiety and gave us some great tools for them and ourselves as adults in these student's lives. He was by far one of the highlights of the weekend.
The breakout sessions were full and everyone was buzzing about the things they were learning. Saturday night we had the pleasure of honoring the nominees and winners of School Nurse of the Year and School Administrator of the Year! Big congratulations to Ana Kim and Mimi Hailes. We also honored our outgoing President, Teresa Ross, and had a wonderful Tuscan buffet dinner and the wine was flowing. We all danced the night away - what an incredible time!
Sunday's legislative brief was informative and helpful to see where we as nurses can advocate for important legislation in Colorado this year. The CASN business meeting was full of collaboration, great feedback, and thoughts on how we will move forward as an organization. Our Executive Committee will be taking these suggestions and feedback to our retreat this week as we plan the rest of this year to provide some incredible education opportunities and times to learn from each other. Stay tuned for the great events and information to come. Please keep watching our website as we update it and give you great content. You will soon see the feature on our website called "our events" where all this will be kept.
Nurses left the CASN conference feeling relaxed, refreshed, and inspired as we heard from our closing keynote speaker, Danette Haag who shared her story and taught us all what it means to walk with courage. There wasn't a dry eye in the place!
Thank you to everyone who donated silent auction baskets - they were wonderful and we raised over $1,000 for the Bertie Eby Scholarship!
Please feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions and mark your calendar for next year's fall conference. You won't want to miss it!
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Tammy Jeffery, MSN-PH, RN, NCSN
CASN President 2023-24
Health Services Coordinator, Jeffco Public Schools
tammy.jeffery@jeffco.k12.co.us616.550.7210 (call or text, no vm please)
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