Vermont Organization of Nurse Leaders (VONL) meeting.

A Vermont Organization of Nurse Leaders meeting was held on November 8, 2007, at Gifford Medical Center. Sixteen VONL members attended the meeting.

A business meeting was followed by an excellent presentation by Jean Ten Hagen, Director of Intermediate and Critical Care Services, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Ms. Ten Hagen presented "Charge Nurse University: Recharging the Charge Nurse Role." This presentation was the result of a ten member team project, part of a Mentoring for Success endeavor at DHMC. Three two-day conferences have been presented to nurses from the cardiovascular services and other medical specialties at DHMC.

Jean's excellent PowerPoint talk was well received with much positive feedback. She graciously shared her PowerPoint presentation, and 2 prompting cards, that contain pre-scripted responses for nurses to use in communicating in difficult situations.

The VONL Board met after lunch to discuss the upcoming VONL Summit, which will be held April 10th and 11th at Killington. The Summit will focus on leadership and mentoring. Sue Boyer is the Conference Chairperson. A call has gone out for abstracts for poster and breakout session presentations. Pat Menchini, Dean of Academic Affairs at VTC, will be the Keynote Speaker, and Mary Val Palumbo, Director of the Office for Nursing Workforce, will be the follow-up speaker.

The next VONL meeting will be held on January 8th, at 9 AM, at Gifford Medical Center. Speaker to be announced.