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Weekly UpdatesGreater Las Vegas area
District 3 has been busy this year with working toward our goals that we established last year in our yearly report. Those goals were:
* Keep membership abreast of legislative and current nursing issues
* Reach out to graduating nurses and other nurses associations in Southern Nevada
* Provide educational offerings
* Help the community at large with health information and promotion
* Uphold the status of nurses
* Have fun
We have kept our membership abreast of legislative and current nursing issues with our RN Formation newspaper articles and the NNA Website. We have helped the community at large with health information by setting on agency boards, giving programs at agencies and working at community health fairs. NNA members have helped other nursing organizations with their community health fairs in diverse ethnic areas such as West Las Vegas.
Our members actively worked the convention for the National Black Nurses Associations national convention, August 1-8, 2008, at the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Dr. Nancy Menzel spoke on the radio station KNPR regarding her research on work related injuries and on research that she is conducting currently in Southern Nevada. Dr. Menzel received national recognition from the CDC on her work with work related safety issues. She is also a nationally recognized authority on the safe handling of patients. Currently, she is assisting NNA's legislative committee on bill draft guidelines for regulation on safe patient handling.
Dr. Debra Toney has been elected the National President of the National Black Nurses Association. This is an organization that has chapters both in the U.S. as well as internationally. Dr. Toney received the 2008 American Legacy Multicultured Healthcare Award. This award is given to a professional that has worked to effectively decrease health disparities in the African-American community. She was also appointed this year as one of three women to the National Institute of Health Advisory Committee on Research on Women's Health.
Lara Carver RN, Ph.D., our communications liaison recently graduated from UNLV as one of 2 Ph.D. students in nursing. We are very proud of her. She is the nursing director for the Nevada Branch of National University. They will be admitting their first undergraduate students this summer. Belen Gato was appointed to the Nevada State Board of Nursing this year. She is the first Philippino nurse to have this honor in our state. She was formerly the president of the Philippine Nurses Association. NNA has been working more cooperatively with the Philippine Nurses Association. They will have a member actively participate on NNA's Legislative Committee.
The multicultural workshop was cancelled this year but we plan to offer more programming at the upcoming convention.
We had fun as a group when nurses and students participated in the Opportunity Village Holiday Festival of Lights. Approximately 75 nursing students and nurses volunteered to assist with rides and concessions at the site. Everyone had fun and would like to volunteer for this yearly. Approximately 25 nurses attended the play A Piece of My Heart, a play about Vietnam Veteran nurses and their lives during the war and back home. It was moving for everyone that attended.
Our goals for the upcoming year remains the same, but would like to increase membership, have more meetings and reach out to graduating nurses.
We have not been successful in getting a nominating committee organized and we need to do this. We are actively looking for candidates for all board positions and a chair of the nominating committee.
Martha Drohobyczer, MSN, CNM
President District Three
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