President's Message for April 2025

Dear Chapter Member,

What a great turnout for the March Meeting.  We had 36 people attend. The room was buzzing with activity, lots of networking and socialization, and the food sponsored by Stryker was great too.  Several were first-time attendees.  The Winter Park location worked out so that some of the nurses could take the SunRail instead of dealing with traffic.

There are still over 50 members who live in the Orlando area that are assigned to other chapters (there were three "Central Florida" chapters before we changed our name, so please talk with your co-workers to be sure they are receiving these emails.  If anyone needs to change their chapter to AORN of Greater Orlando-Chapter 1015, all they need to do is call AORN at 800-755-2676 anytime from 10:00am -6:30pm EST Mon-Fri and request the change.  Kevin has reached out to members we have in our chapter that live outside of our area to make sure they want to maintain us as their home chapter.  

AORN National elections have begun.  There is a link to the candidates on the AORN home page (www.aorn.org).  From the home page, scroll down and the link to vote is near the bottom left.  Voting will close during Expo the night of April 7 so the winners can be announced prior to the end of the convention.

Florida is again working on passing Smoke Evacuation legislation.  This is our third year and we appear to be close to success.  We have stronger backing this year but we could still use more people to contact their elected representatives to support passing this initiative.  Here is a link to HB103 if you want to see the progress of the bill: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2025/103/?Tab=BillHistory

If you have not been to our chapter 1015, here is the link (https://aornorlando.nursingnetwork.com/).  If you have not set up an account, there is a link on the page.  The site provides news and activities for our chapter and other nursing specialties in the area including seminars and conferences.

The second annual Southeastern Regional Council Conference will be held here in St Augustine the weekend of Nov 1-2.  This was a sell out in Charleston and the attendees raved about how good it was.  This is a great way to see a miniature version of the national AORN Expo.  Hopefully many of you will try to attend.  Registration and hotel information should be available soon after we get back from Boston.

The chapter received a very nice Thank You letter from Second Harvest Food Bank for our monetary donation last year stating that it helped provide approximately 800 meals.  This has been our charity for the past two years and I am keeping it the same this year due to the great work they do in meeting such a basic human need.  We will be collecting donations from now through the holiday party.  

I mentioned at our meeting that a group I belong to in Virginia helps some of the frail members/widows with spring cleaning yardwork for those who can't do it for themselves.  I have also done some Habitat for Humanity and Salvation Army work.  One of the members shared that she helped with Second Harvest preparing meal packs and found that it was very rewarding.   If you know a retired nurse who needs some assistance or if you have something you participate in, let's work together and set up a service event to give back to the community.

Our next meeting is slated for May 8, 2025.  Typicallly those who attended Expo present on their favorite sessions or something they learned to help their practice.  More to come once we set a location.  The social hour from 5:00-6:00pm followed by education and then the meeting has been working out really well, so I plan to keep with that agenda.  If anyone has ideas for locations, sponsors, topics, or if you want to present, please let me know.

Brian E Parton, MA, RN, CNOR

OR Staff Nurse/ONS Peri-Op FAC Member

Lake Baldwin VA Clinic

Orlando, FL