August 21, 2019 | NLN CEO Update on 2019 NLN Awards

It's NLN 2019 Summit season, colleagues. All of us at the NLN are engaged in final preparation for the NLN North Star: Purpose, Power, & Passion, to take place five weeks and one day from now, September 26–28 at the National Harbor, just outside Washington, DC. One of my favorite aspects of the Summit is the opportunity it provides to recognize our nursing education colleagues — and friends of nursing education — for their outstanding contributions to our profession.

Before I tell you about those the NLN will honor at this Summit, let me digress briefly to ask you to contact your representative in support of the US Cadet Nurse Corps Service Recognition Act, which recognizes cadet nurses' "service to our country" and would classify service in the corps as "active military service." The bill, in its current form, would offer honorable discharges, ribbon and medal privileges, and certain burial privileges through the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Cadet Nurse Corps, established in 1943 as an integrated, uniformed service of the Public Health Administration, provided young women with expedited nursing education in exchange for service in essential nursing settings for the duration of the war. This recognition is long overdue, and I encourage you to visit the NLN Advocacy Action Center for information about how you can take action. Do you know the NLN connection to the Cadet Nurse Corps? Lucile Petry Leone, its founding director, became president of the League in 1959 and served until 1963, a pivotal period for nursing education.

Now, let me tell you about those we will honor at this year's Summit, starting with the recipients of two President's Awards, to be presented at the Opening Ceremony. After presenting his keynote address on "Humanism in the Health Professions and in Society," George E. Thibault, MD, will be recognized for his groundbreaking efforts to break down the traditional silo-approach to health professions education. Dr. Thibault, who retired in 2018 as president of the Macy Foundation, is an honorary fellow in both the NLN Academy of Nursing Education and the American Academy of Nursing, and one of our friends of nursing education I referred to earlier. The other President's Award honoree is Dr. Marilyn Oermann, Thelma M. Ingles Professor of Nursing in the School of Nursing at Duke University and editor of Nurse Educator. When the NLN Foundation for Nursing Education decided to start a Scholarly Writing Retreat in 2008, we invited Marilyn to take the lead. She crafted the curriculum and the hands-on format, and in the past 11 years has served as a generous mentor, guiding participants through all aspects of the writing and publication process and sharing her love for nursing education scholarship. The Scholarly Writing Retreat continues to have a very high success rate, with nearly all participants publishing their work. A leader in the International Academy of Nurse Editors, she is the author or co-author of 21 books and more than 190 articles in peer-reviewed journals and a wide variety of other publications!

By the way, we have extended the deadline to this Friday, August 23, for this fall's Scholarly Writing Retreat, to be led Dr. Leslie Nicoll — you still have time to apply.

Our other NLN awards commemorate three historic figures in nursing education and will be presented as part of the special Honors Convocation on Saturday evening. The NLN Mary Adelaide Nutting Award for Outstanding Teaching or Leadership in Nursing Education will be presented to Dr. Barbara Alice Anderson, professor emerita at the Frontier Nursing University, who has a long career in nursing education at all levels as well as public health and nurse-midwifery. Dr. Anderson is co-author with Lisa Roberts of the new book, The Maternal Health Crisis in America: Nursing Implications for Advocacy and Practice (Springer, 2019), which examines the social determinants responsible for an escalating crisis in maternal health and provides strategies and roadmaps for improved outcomes.

The NLN Isabel Hampton Robb Award for Outstanding Leadership in Clinical Practice will go to Dr. Nancy Elaine Sabol Edwards, a professor at Purdue University School of Nursing and program director for the Adult Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Program. Dr. Edwards has established several academic/clinical partnerships where clinical practice informs education and education informs practice. She has led educational innovations that promote health systems analysis, quality initiatives to improve care delivery, and enhancement of mental health competencies in primary care providers.

And finally and in no way least, the NLN Lillian Wald Humanitarian Award will be presented to another honorary fellow in the American Academy of Nursing as well as a honorary fellow of the NLN Academy of Nursing Education and a good friend of nursing education, Dr. Daniel B. Oerther. Dr. Oerther is professor of environmental health engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology and director of the Missouri Center for Science Diplomacy Lab. His humanitarian efforts include global research on WaSH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) to eliminate childhood stunting, a program founded in Guatemala and replicated in Brazil, Ghana, India, Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania. It is a nursing-inspired program of care and interventions that impact costs, improve health care quality, and enhance satisfaction among mothers and their children in developing communities where stunting is prevalent.

These are three outstanding individuals — it will be wonderful to meet them, and all of you, at the Summit. Sadly, we recently learned that Dr. Deborah Raines, whom the NLN honored with the Isabel Hampton Robb Award for Leadership in Clinical Practice, has died. Dr. Raines wrote frequently on teaching strategies and the evaluation of educational interventions and her work has appeared in the NLN research journal Nursing Education Perspectives. Her research centered on parenting behaviors, pregnancy and newborn health, and nursing workforce development through innovative education including the use of simulation to improve infant care transitions from intensive care nurseries to the home. Dr. Raines also served as a member of the NLN Awards Committee from 2017-2019. Her recognition by the NLN was richly deserved and her loss is profound.

Now, before I close, a few words. After my August 7 Member Update appeared, where I touched on recent tragedies in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, a member wrote to remind me that there were actually three recent mass shootings. I had neglected to mention the tragedy at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, where she had been a Red Cross volunteer. Let me extend my personal apology for the omission. From Connecticut, to Colorado, to California, to large cities, suburbs, and rural areas, we are dealing with a terrible epidemic of violence and loss that simply has to stop. On August 8, NLN President Dr. Rumay Alexander and I issued a call for civility among our national community. If you missed it, I hope you will read it now. We reflect on the NLN core values of caring, integrity, excellence, and especially diversity, and we call for courageous conversation. That conversation will happen at our Summit. I'm looking forward to seeing you there – involved and engaged.

Colleagues, the Summit will provide resources to implement our purpose with power and passion, always with a view of our North Star. Come join us and be part of nursing education at our very best.