Welcome back!

Not that any of you have gone too far, but it is September! I hope you all had a great summer, short as it was here in Victoria :-(... It is going to be a great year with many of you launching into your research. I am going to be consumed this fall with the CAPWHN conference here in Victoria (Canadian Association of Perinatal and Women's Health Nurses), and with many other things of course, but all good. I would like to welcome a new MN student to our neonatal community of practice - welcome to Nadine - feel free to come on board and introduce yourself, it would be great also if you are interested for everyone else to check in with where you are at, what your neonatal interests are at the moment. Remember, this is your blog (hmm, Colleen I think this was your idea?)..

I am looking forward to traveling to Toronto in February for the Canadian Association of Neonatal Nurses conference (actually looking forward to the conference, not to traveling to Toronto in February..), perhaps some of you will make it there too, hard to do when you are a student, I certainly understand. For those of you on the Westcoast, at the CAPWHN conference we do have some neonatal talks, including Deb Fraser Askin talking about care of the late preterm infant and writing for publication, and Carolyn Lund on skin care.

Looking forward to a great year with you all!! Let's keep in touch..Lenora

Washington APN conference

Hi everybody - well it is late but it has been a great first day here at the Neonatal Advanced Practice Nursing Forum here in Washington DC. It has been almost 100 degrees out, what a change from Victoria, tonight there was a thunderstorm which settled things down a bit, but hey I have started my tan. I did my talk today on neonatal withdrawal assessment as part of the larger preconference day on NAS - I learned lots, happy to share when I get home. Went out tonight for a crab feast with some of the team. I have to tell you today I met Susan Blackburn, Carol Kenner, Carolyn Lund and Madge Buus-Frank! Look up those names and you will see why I was excited..then of course after dinner we went to the hotel bar to watch the Canucks score their first win over Boston - good thing I was not the only Canadian here! Allison - I met your supervisor tonight! My advice to you as budding advanced practice nurses - I cannot say enough about the power of networking. Well, time to get to sleep, a full day tomorow. Take care everyone. Lenora

our first post

Hi all - here we are our first evening at the wine and cheese with Karen Lasby of the Calgary Neonatal Follow Up Program - wish you were all here!

Off to Calgary! Yee Ha!

Hi everybody - well - a few of us are off to Calgary for the National Neonatal Nursing Conference. How about we promise to send a few posts while we are there to get you in on all the exciting things we are learning....Lenora

New CPS statement on late preterm

Hi all - a heads up - recently released - a new position statement on safe discharge of the late preterm infant, 2010. You will notice that Pat O'Flaherty from the Canadian Association of Neonatal Nurses was rep on this working group. This kind of statement provides a good opportunity to bridge the perinatal and neonatal worlds. It also got me thinking about how we can not only deal with the infants themselves but also look at upstream factors that many be contributing to the numbers in this group. For example, how often are we inducing women early in our obstetrical side of things and not considering the impact on the infant and also our services...

Launching our new blog...

Hi everyone! I am taking Colleen up on her brilliant idea of starting a blog. The emails have only taken us so far, let's see if we can find a blog useful for keeping us connected. I am hoping that we can use this space to let everyone know about neonatal (and pediatric too!) events and resources. Here in Canada we are a small but mighty group, and networking is very important for keeping us connected. I encourage you all to check in here and introduce yourself again. This is a site for all of us! Lenora