Greetings to all OASN members:

There have been some significant happenings since the last report to the membership. Significant in that OASN has been asked to participate in several meetings, instead of finding out about the meetings after they occurred.

FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S DESK
February, 2008

As an OASN member, you may occasionally wonder what the board of directors actually do on your behalf as a school nurse and to further the practice of school nursing in Ohio. OASN is increasingly called upon to provide testimony at the state level in a meeting with Governor Strickland and other pupil support services personnel; discuss interpretation of laws, e.g. administration of drugs, delegation of nursing tasks, that impact school nursing with the Ohio Board of Nursing; and attend legislative press conferences and write letters to support legislation to improve the health of families (Ohioans for Healthy Families, Ohio CARE HB 456, Database for emergency notification of next of kin). Board members attend meetings with legislators and events that provide a forum for informing others about the mission and purpose of school nursing (Nurses Visit the Statehouse, New School Nurse Orientation, ODH/ASHA Regional workshops, Ohio School Boards Association).

Increasingly, OASN is being recognized as the "go to" organization for information on school nursing in Ohio. Media reporters contact the OASN office for data on caseload ratios and interviews. Just recently, Tracey Childress, the East Regional Representative on the OASN board was interviewed by CTV - Steubenville.

In the near future, OASN board members will be meeting with a legislator to discuss establishing rules under the Ohio Administrative Code for the "Administration of Drugs", as it is entitled in the 1984 law. We believe the development of such rules will establish some safeguards for interpretation in school districts that designate their administration.

We have welcomed over 30 new members to OASN since September. To our new members, I hope this brief summary of some of the work of the board convinces you that your dollars have been spent on a worthy investment in your career. We encourage you to take advantage of the Pat Baum Scholarship and the Carolyn Azbell Research Award in order to advance your education and/or pursue research in school nursing practice.

In closing, Maureen Knowles, Vice President and Chair of the OASN 35th Annual Conference, the energetic school nurses of NWOASN, and I, invite you to attend on April 4 - 6th at the Lodge at Saw Mill Creek, Huron, OH. Enjoy the beautiful surroundings and have a great time networking with your colleagues while furthering your knowledge of school nursing! Registration forms have been mailed to members but are also available for printing out on the oasn.org website.

Sincerely,

Renee Besecker

The second General Membership meeting of SWOSNA was held Thursday, November 8, 2007 at the Holiday Inn, Dayton Mall. SWOSNA members, Kathy O'Dell, Stacy Flint, and Crystal Thornton presented an enlightening session titled "Ethical Dilemmas in School Nursing." CEUs were earned by nurses in attendance.

Upcoming meetings and conferences that southwest school nurses will want to attend are:

• SWOSNA BOD Meeting will be held February 28, 2008 at Sycamore Hospital, Dayton, 4:30 - 6:30 PM.
• 2008 OASN Annual Conference April 4th - 6th, Saw Mill Creek Resort, Huron, OH. Join us in honoring southwest Ohio's Eva Garchar as the 2008 Ohio School Nurse of the Year at the Annual Banquet on Saturday, April 5th!
• Spring General Membership Meeting will be held Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 4:30 - 7:00 PM, at the Warren County Career Center in Lebanon, OH. The CEU program topic will be "Why Abstinence Matters" presented by Cathy St. James. Please visit www.swosna.org for registration information.

Joan Hlinomaz , RN, BSN, MS, NCSN
Southwest Ohio Representative to OASN

The dinner and biannual meeting for Northwest was held on Tuesday, October 20th at the Stone Oak Country Club. The CE topic was Living Well with Asthma. The meeting was well attended.

The NWOASN board conducted a meeting on Thursday, January 24, 2008. Meeting minutes from the last general meeting were read and approved.

A revised membership roster was distributed to the board. There are currently 69 members for Northwest.

The winter conference was held on 2/9/08 at St. Luke's Hospital. The conference title was "H.A.N.D.S (Helping to Administer to the Needs of the Student with Diabetes in School)". There were approximately 75 nurses registered that attend including 5 nurses from Indiana.

The board is in preliminary planning stages for the spring meeting and CE event in May which will also be held at St. Luke's hospital.

The NWOASN newsletter is available on the OASN website and at NWOASN.org. The next newsletter will be issued sometime this spring. Jan Overmeyer provided the email address for the webmaster and continues to encourage the board to post upcoming events on the site.

Past president, Candi Hendershot, is recruiting candidates for the office of President-elect. Elections will occur at the winter meeting. Installation will be at the May meeting. Candi was also congratulated on her recent doctoral degree.

Maureen Knowles reviewed state conference planning. Northwest is hosting the conference at Sawmill Creek. Committee chairpersons are all actively working and planning appears to be ahead of schedule. Maureen has also been successful in obtaining some significant donations for the conference.

A motion was made and accepted to donate $125 toward a basket from Northwest toward the State Conference.

Respectfully submitted,
Marie Kraus, NW Rep

SEOASN will have their spring meeting on Sun. evening before the regional school nurse conference in Newark, OH in April. The time will be announced later.

Election of officers will be taking place during this meeting as long as there is a quorum. Any member that is interested in taking an office, please contact Annette Scott, Lori Moore, or Lesa Slack.

Current Officers are:
Lesa Slack, President (Lawrence County)
Tammy Lorbach, Vice President (Jackson County)
Kim Skidmore - Secretary (Gallia County)
Becky Gilpen, Treasurer (Lawrence County)
Annette Scott, SE Rep. (Lawrence County)
Lori Moore - Nominating Committee (Jackson County)

Respectfully submitted,

Annette Scott, RN, BSN
SE representative to OASN

The COASN Board met in November at La Chatelaine Restaurant to continue the planning for the year. The board meeting for January was rescheduled to later February. President Lisa Kauffman has resigned as a school nurse from Columbus Public Schools to pursue studies as a nurse practitioner. Hence, President-Elect Juanita Smith will now take over Lisa's remaining term. The board plans to meet later in February to plan the final membership meeting of the year which is expected to be the week of National School Nurses Day.

The second dinner and CNE event for membership was held January 30th at Villa Millano Ristorante in north Columbus. Fifty eight participants were present for the dinner and the CNE topic: "Autism Spectrum Disorder: Implications for the School Nurse. The excellent speakers were: Lynn Dudek, M.S., CCCSLP- MBA, and Chris Fuller, BSN, RN, Transition Coordinator for Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence (OCALI). Members were given information on the upcoming national autism conference to be held in Columbus in November, 2008. For more information on this upcoming conference, go to http://www.nattapconference.org. These speakers are very interested in continuing to dialogue with school nurses throughout Ohio. The website for OCALI is www.ocali.org. An excellent free resource was shared which is now available on their website for downloading or ordering: Ohio's Parent Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorders. Also, free education and training on autism spectrum disorders is available at www.autisminternetmodules.org.

The next COASN newsletter will be published in February. The finances of COASN remain healthy with an approximate balance of $4868.50. Membership is at 105 members. COASN continues to have a website at www.coasn.org .

Respectfully Submitted,
Joan Keith, RN, MED, NCSN

Nine members of the NEOASN Board met for a breakfast meeting on Saturday, January 12th to plan for the spring meeting. Due to a scheduling conflict, our spring meeting date has been postponed until Thursday evening, May 8th. It will be held in the Community Room at the Cleveland Clinic Family Health Center in Strongsville. Our speaker will be Bob Gray, from the department of sports medicine,who will give an update on assessment and treatment of accidents and sports injuries. Details and registration information will be mailed. Our annual drawing for state and national conference scholarships will be held that evening as well.

At our last meeting, the membership voted to change the bylaws to permit the organization to use e-mail to deliver the newsletter, communicate upcoming business, inform members of proposed by-law changes, nominations and any other business previously delivered by mail. This change makes it important that members provide a current e- mail address each year. Mailings will still be provided to any member who notifies us that e-mail is not available to them. Mailings will continue this year with reminders and alerts about this change in communication.

Nominations are now being accepted for next year's officer elections. Contact our president, Elizabeth Anderson (earni2001@yahoo.com) if you are interested. Participation in this regional organization is a great opportunity to grow professionally and you will be given support to learn the job. Please consider it.

Mary Massey
NE Rep. to OASN

The candidates for offices of the Board of Directors of OASN that need to be filled at our annual conference in April are: President Elect, Treasurer, and Secretary. There is only one candidate for each of the offices of President Elect and Treasurer, and no candidate for the office of Secretary, thus it is not necessary to have an election by ballot.
The candidates are:

President Elect - Eva Garcher from the Southwest region
Treasurer - Joan Keith from the Central region
Secretary - candidate needed!

President Elect Candidate Vitae: Eva Garcher, RN, MSN, NCSN

Nurse/ School Nurse experience:
Eva is currently employed as a licensed school nurse in the Kings Mills Local School district in Kings Mills, Ohio. She has served at Kings as the Nursing Coordinator for the district, and is currently the school nurse at Columbia Elementary. Previous experience includes working in health services for Mason city Schools, pediatric home health care with Maternal Child Healthcare Services, and pediatric nursing at Todd Children's Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio; and San Diego Children's hospital in San Diego, California.

Education:
Eva received her AD and BSN at Youngstown State University and her school nurse licensure and MSN at Wright State University.

Professional Affiliations/ Offices/ Awards:
Professional organization membership includes NEA, OEA, NASN, OASN, and SWOSNA. Eva was the 2005 recipient of the Pat Baum Scholarship Award. She has served as Member-at-Large for OASN, and as President of SWOSNA. She is this year's Ohio School Nurse of the Year.

Community Involvement:
American Red Cross Instructor.

Treasurer Candidate Vitae: Joan Keith, RN, BSN, MEd, NCSN

Nurse/ School Nurse Experience:
Joan is currently a school nurse with Upper Arlington City Schools at Jones Middle School. Previous school nurse experience also includes work as a state school nurse consultant with the Ohio Department of Health, and as a school nurse for Columbus City Schools.

Education:
Joan received her BSN at Ohio State University. She completed a Master in Education at Cambridge College in Cambridge, MA.

Professional Affiliation/ Offices/ Awards:
Professional organization membership includes NASN, OASN, and COASN since 1992. She has served as COASN representative to OASN and as COASN President, as well as, many other positions and activities with COASN.

Community Involvement:
American Heart Association BCLS Instructor. Blood Drive Chair for American Red Cross annual event at Jones Middle School. Ohio Asthma Coalition conference planning co-chair. Community Emergency Response Team. Member Upper Arlington Lutheran Church.

Secretary - Actively seeking candidate.

The secretary is a member of the executive board and votes at all board meetings. The position is for two years, and the new secretary will be installed at the annual conference in April.

The secretary should be able to attend the board meetings. There are 5 per year. The November, February, and May meetings are held on a Saturday in Columbus, Ohio. Another meeting is held the evening before the annual conference (usually a Thursday night, and at the conference site). The last is the summer retreat, which is a two day meeting in the summer, usually during the week.

The secretary is responsible to take the minutes at the board meetings, and then type them for distribution to board members.

Anyone interested in this position should contact your regional representative to OASN who will forward the nomination; or contact Deb Strouse at dstrouse739@columbus.k12.oh.us .

The January NASN BOD meeting was held in Alexandria, Virginia the 26th through the 31st. The leadership component of the meeting consisted of a wonderful session about parliamentary procedures and fiscal responsibilities of non-profit boards. We also received an update on the current membership software program.

On Lobby Day, Norma Nikkola and I visited both of Ohio's Senators offices as well as our individual Representative offices. We discussed issues of concern on both a national as well as on a state level about the need for SCHIP to be passed, Medicaid issues, ratio of school nurse to student in Ohio as well as nationally, mental health issues in schools etc. We also left them with printed material and information regarding future or pending legislation for which NASN is seeking support.

We toured the American Red Cross Building Disaster Center in Washington, DC and also the Clara Barton Historical Site.

NASN 40th Annual Conference
The site of this year's conference will be Albuquerque, New Mexico. A membership survey was done where members were asked to indicate their preferences for where they would like the Annual Conference to be held in the future. The survey showed that Boston was #1, San Francisco was #2 and Chicago was #3.Future sites therefore will be Boston in 2009, Chicago in 2010, DC in 2011, and San Francisco in 2012.

Membership ISSUES
If you have any difficulties renewing your membership to NASN? OASN online please email me at nasnrep@oasn.org .NASN is implementing a new policy regarding renewing your membership. Current members should note that they are eliminating the practice of providing a three month grace period. This is being done to make it easier to track membership. Please remember to renew promptly so that you will not be without your member benefits

WITH NASN, YOU'VE GOT BENEFITS AND FREE STUFF!!

Check out NASN website for no cost on line offerings such as the following:

- "Effective Ways to Be Heard" School Nurse advocacy- A online CNE program available at no cost to first 2000 NASN members. Pass it on!!
- "Practices and Principles of Influenza Management in the School Setting: The School Nurses Role" It is Available free to the first 2000 members.
- Coming up soon at the NASN's web site, will be Members Only section on "Promoting Non -Violence".
- The NASN Weekly Digest is now sent to all members. If you are not receiving the Digest, you can email NASN at digest@lists.NASN.org. The Digest is a great way to stay on top of what is happening is school nursing.

Respectfully submitted,
Aurelia Barney
OASN Director to NASN

"A TASTE OF OHIO"
An Endowment Event to remember!

Have you ever wondered why school nurses attending a conference will start out the day with a 7:00 AM breakfast workshop on HEAD LICE; have lunch at 12:00PM while seeing a slide presentation on SKIN DISORDERS; indulge in an evening meal while listening to a lecture about HPV; then end the day with an 8:00PM discussion on "WHY WE DO THE THINGS WE DO?" It seems to me that we should consider the last statement first!!

As a result of some serious conversation between members of your Endowment Event committee, it was decided that this year- it would be different for at least one part of a day. Therefore, we would like to invite you to attend the Friday night April 4th celebration entitled, "A TASTE OF OHIO" to be held in Settler's Cabin from 6:00PM-8:00PM.

It will be a strictly social affair and include samplings of a variety of Ohio wines, cheeses, fruits, hot hors d'oeuvres, and mini-desserts (the specific menu is a secret!). The atmosphere will be casual and we hope to offer a time for networking by renewing old friendships, making new ones, just relaxing, reviewing the purpose of the Endowment Fund and learning about Ohio's wine country. Surprises are also in the planning.

This is a special event and reservations must be made when you send in your conference registration. Remember that $25 of the cost of event is tax deductible and monies go directly to our OASN Education and Research Endowment Fund. This Fund supports the Carolyn Azbell Research Award, the Patricia M. Baum Educational Scholarship, and the $500 Raffle prize awarded to an attendee planning to go to the NASN conference in Albuquerque this coming June.

We hope that many of you will plan to attend, increase your "angel level" by your donation and just have a great time!!

Norma Nikkola, Endowment Chair
nnikkola@earthlink.net Donate online

Nominations are now being accepted for the Ohio School Nurse of the Year Award. This award, which is the highest award presented annually by OASN, recognizes one school nurse who demonstrates excellence in school nursing practice and leadership in school health.

Candidates must be currently employed, full-time Ohio school nurses with at least five years experience. Active membership in OASN for the current and previous two years is required. The selections will be made on the basis of the school nurse's contributions to school health and school nursing practice. This would include clinical skills, creative programs, leadership, research projects, political and legislative contributions, and community and professional involvement. Evidence of excellence in school nursing practice will be based on Scope and Standards of Professional School Nursing Practice (2005, ANA).

The nomination forms take time to prepare and must involve the nurse being nominated. Completed nomination packets are due June 15. Forms may be obtained from our website www.oasn.org in the "AWARDS" section. Even if you are not considering a nomination for this coming year, take a look at the forms and criteria for selection as they appear online. It will give you an idea of all that is involved and a greater appreciation of the accomplishments of those who have earned the Ohio School Nurse of the Year Award!

Ohio school nurses from the central region were among nurses across Ohio who volunteered their time to support the campaign of Jan Lanier. Jan, a registered nurse and an attorney, is running for the Second District seat of the Ohio House of Representatives.

OASN nurses pictured above (left to right): Joan Keith,Gabrielle Karpowicz, Jan Lanier, Ann Underwood and Deborah Strouse

Pictured below: Deborah Strouse

We encourage all of our OASN members to vote on March 4th!

The Central Ohio Poison Center has recently moved to its new building and has some new administrative phone numbers. Thus, the recent move has brought to light a few changes with poison control centers over the past several years. There used to be more than 20 poison control centers around the State of Ohio. In 2008, we are down to only three. Most of those old numbers for closed poison control centers have been automatically forwarded to the national poison control number, which is 1-800-222-1222. It is expensive to continue to forward old numbers and may not be supported at the new center. Also, the national number has been advertised for at least five years.

Please help spread the word to your students' parents and school staff that the National Poison Control Center number is 1-800- 222-1222. Poison Control Centers also receive some of their funding based on the number of calls made to that exchange.

If you have questions regarding the "Central Ohio" Poison Center, you may reach the Medical Director, Marcel Casavant, MD, FACMT, FACEP, at email address: Marcel.Casavant@nationwideChildrens.org or the Managing Director, David Baker, PHARM D, DABAT at email address: David.Baker@NationwideChildrens.org .

Deborah Strouse, President-Elect, OASN

Exciting news!
Jerry Drake, AMCI, IMPACT SIIS and Robyn Taylor from ODH, reported recently that "read only" status of IMPACT will potentially be offered to all Ohio school nurses in August, 2008.

IMPACT is Ohio's state-wide immunization registry and reminder system. Nurses in Cincinnati Public Schools have been using the registry for several years now and immunization rates have significantly increased. IMPACT has eliminated many missing or lost immunization records of students that might have otherwise been excluded from school.

If you have contact with any primary care providers including health centers and private physicians, in your vicinity encourage them to use the registry in their practice. It will make your job so much easier once you have access to IMPACT. ODH will provide free training to any interested provider.

Kim Toole RN, MSN, NCSN
OASN Membership Chair

There has been some problems with interpretation of a full or partial conference attendance:

-A full conference is 2 or more days, that is either Friday, Saturday, and Sunday OR Friday and Saturday.
-A 1 or 1 1/2 day attendance would be either Friday OR Saturday OR Saturday & Sunday.

Sorry for any misunderstanding!
Renee C Besecker, RN, BSN, MS, NCSN