SER WOCN® News

Welcome to our States' News Page

Use the contact form to submit your area's news to the State Reporter for posting.

North Carolina

by: position open

News from North Carolina

03/25/2020 Aimee Quillen, RN, CWON and Joanne Burtner have started an Ostomy support group in western NC. Our information is listed on the UOAA website. We meet the 2nd Monday of the month (but not on Federal/State holidays) in Sylva, NC.

03/25/20200 We are looking for a person in NC to be your state's reporter for our news page. If you are interested, please contact Melanie Jacobs, SER Director of Communications, for information.

OTA Program News: Cone Health, in Greensboro, is now offering the OTA program.

Please share your news: (open contact form)

South Carolina

by: Valerie Harris

Greetings from South Carolina

03/25/2020 Please see the article in the March/April 2020 edition of JWOCN titled “Executive Summary of LEVD Guidelines”. Authors include four Southeast Region members; Teresa Kelechi, Glenda Brunette, Lea Crestodina and Phyllis Bonham. Very exciting for these individuals. They are also planning a session for WOCNext. Full members of WOCN^®can view the article here.

01/22/20 Episode 34 of WOC Talk entitled “Bridging our care from research to bedside” features Southeast Region’s own Teresa Kelechi discussing research & evidence based practice. more info...

10/29/19 The Charleston WOC nurses recently gathered at Circa 1886 to hear a presentation on ostomy barriers. Nurses from Roper, Roper Home Health, East Cooper, and the Medical University of South Carolina were in attendance.
From L-R: Julie Ross, Jackie Fowler, Staci Bacon, Glenda Brunette, Stephanie Murray, Faith Singleton, Mitzi Finn, Karen Halverson, Lindsay Zimmer, Rebecca Rothemich, Cindy Miller, Valerie Harris, Lisa Stewart, and Karin Crookes.

The updated outpatient clinic list has been updated and shared with the SC group. If you need a copy, please contact Glenda Brunette

Please contact your state reporter with your professional news updates: (open contact form)

Tennessee

by: Barbara Dale

Greetings All!

1/28/2020 Henry County Medical Center is expanding their outpatient wound clinic. Sonya Clark has been named the new Director of the Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine. Sonya also recently became certified as a CFCN last year and she wants everyone to know she highly recommends it!

10/20/19 The SER regional conference in Columbus, Georgia was great. We had 154 attendees at conference, and 70 of them were 1st time attendees. Including 3 new Tennessee members: Terry Postma from Ocoee, Yi Yang from Oak Ridge and Jason Ayers from Crossvile!

Notes from Joyce Black's presentation on Pressure Industry
Determining the timing of the pressure injury Development:

Stage 1 - Likely began in last 12 - 24 hours
DTI - purple tissue without epidermal loss likely began 49 hours ago
Stage 2 - likely began 24 hours ago
Stage 3 and 4 - began at least 72 hours ago

If the head of the bed was elevated, and pt gets pi- it will be in a heart shape If the head of bed was flat (OR table)- and pt gets pi- it will be rectangle shape

In the OR, a pi can begin in about 3 hours.

10/20/19 The Nashville Ostomy 5K "Run for Resilience" was held October 12th. For this 3rd annual event, there were over 45 participants including several ostomates braving the very cold wind at Shelby Park to raise ostomy awareness. Hollister, Coloplast, Convatec, UOAA(all the way from Michigan!), and Seven Springs Orthopedics were the vendors at the start/finish line. Hollister and Coloplast were the sponsors! Special thank you to Manny Cuevas and his family and Deborah Nelson and her family for making the event possible and cheering everyone on in the cold! images from our run

Please send your news – we know there are great things going on in Tennessee! If anyone is interested in taking on the state reporter role, please contact Barbara Dale. (open contact form)

Alabama

by: Melanie Jacobs

Alabama Greetings!

posted 4/1/2020 Central Alabama WOC Nurses’ Association participated in Project Homeless Connect again this year. On February 29th, several members came out to support the efforts in the greater Birmingham area, providing footcare to the homeless of the community. Please see photo demonstrating the hard work that these individuals contributed.

The Central Alabama WOC Nurses’ Association has also decided to postpone the Spring Workshop and monthly meetings during this time.

Congratulations to Lucinda Hewlett, RN, CWCN and Dewanna Hines, RN, CWCN for passing their Wound Certification Exam recently. They both are part of a 4 team member inpatient Wound Care Team at Huntsville Hospital.

Respectfully submitted in behalf of Central Alabama Wound Ostomy Nurses Association.

Our Leadership:

President: Cynthia P. Hill
Vice President: Brigitte Vola
Secretary: Marla Wilson
Assistant Secretary: Cynthia Cunningham

Please share your Alabama news with us: contact Melanie Jacobs

Florida

by: Kathryn Dere

Greetings!

3/19/2020 update: POSTPONED Florida Association of Enterostomal Therapists (FAET) is planning their annual conference. This is always a fun, economic, full scope conference that rotates around the state. This year, the conference, Finding Gold on the Treasure Coast, will be in Stuart, Florida at the Marriott Hutchinson Island Beach Resort & Marina, April 24-25. For more information, go to the web site: www.faet.org.

Wow, where did 2019 go? It seems we were just together at SER conference in Columbus, GA. It had been many years since I attended a SER conference, and I still believe our SER conferences are superior. Always full scope with more advanced presentations, excellent pre-con, and interesting posters and studies. Way to go Nancy Scott, Amy Beightel, and Rhonda Musgrove on your poster, Smooth Sailing Through the Waves of a Pressure Injury Prevalence Survey. It was great seeing so many from Florida and catchup on people’s lives.

Click images for larger view

Conference planning is well on the way for this year’s SER conference in Orlando, Florida, September 24-26, at the Rosen Center Hotel. Megan Chipman and her team are working on the agenda aimed to entice, stimulate, and be a vision of wonder. Hopefully, in the near future, I’ll be able to share the particulars with you. If you are interested in helping in any way, please feel free to contact Megan using the contact form. Of course, for more information and the latest buzz, keep an eye on the conference page.

If you have any professional news to share, lectures or publications you’ve presented, please let me know. I love singing the praises of my fellow Floridians.
Kathryn Dere (open contact form)

Georgia

by: Regina Wilson

Greetings from Georgia!

5/28/2020 Educational webinar via Zoom was sponsored by Sigvaris Inc, May 27, 2020, 6 - 7 PM.

1/15/2020 Hello everyone. Happy 2020! Hope you all had a wonderful holiday celebration. I have some news: I passed my ostomy exam and can now add the initials CWON. I studied using a variety of resources.

10/23/2019 Just wanted to let everyone know that I had a good time attending the regional conference in Columbus GA. This was my first regional conference and I met great people and learned a great deal. I felt very inspired as a WOC nurse. I encourage everyone to make plans to attend the next regional conference in Orlando next year.

10/12/2019 Georgia is excited to have hosted the 2019 SER of the WOCN conference in Columbus, GA, October 3-5. Thanks to the entire team for putting on a great event.

9/4/2019 Joy Hooper, Tifton Georgia, was thrilled to receive the UOAA's honor being named the WOCN of the Year for 2019. The award was presented at the WOCNext Conference in Nashville and the UOAA National Conference in Philadelphia. Congratulations!

Consortium Announcements:

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News from our States