The gift of touching lives

AORN Journal, Nov, 2004 by William J. Duffy

I want to wish each of you a wonderful Perioperative Nurse Week. As part of the goal of celebrating our value this year, we should all pause and take a few moments to celebrate the value our colleagues bring to each other, our employers, and our patients. I encourage you to do something at work to mark this occasion. Whether it is a potluck Lunch or breakfast, a raffle, or just taking time during morning report to celebrate some wonderful nursing that has occurred during the past year, taking time to reflect on the value you bring will strengthen your soul and lighten your heart. We all touch lives in so many ways that it sometimes is hard to see unless we stop and put it all into perspective.

Touching lives does not stop with our patients; it also resonates through to a patient's spouse, children, and children's children. That is why the logo for this year's Perioperative Nurse Week is a heart with generations of people inside it and the caring hand of a perioperative nurse touching them all through one touch of the patient. It is a powerful and truthful message and one we should not let pass quietly. Celebrate your power and your corn passion. Congratulations, whether this was your first year of caring or your 40th year. We all make the world a little better, one patient at a time.

One way AORN is celebrating the week is by helping our perioperative nursing colleagues in Panama create their own perioperative nurses association. This month, several AORN experts, along with Latin American counterparts, will give presentations at the inaugural meeting of the Panamanian Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses. The Panamanian nurses are excited and honored that their long struggle to achieve this vision is coming to fruition. They would like to gain the influence and stature of their American counterparts in the delivery of health care in Panama some day. It is a wonderful goal that probably mirrors our hopes when AORN was just forming. I want to thank Brenda Ulmer, RN, MSN, CNOR, chairperson of the International Advisory Committee, and her colleague Lizette Fernandez of Tyco, Inc, a member of the International Advisory Committee. They were instrumental in helping the Panamanian nurses achieve this vision. They put their heart and soul into this effort and they, along with each member of AORN, are part of a movement that will change the lives of Panamanian nurses and patients for decades to come.

We all should be proud of our efforts to improve the health of all surgical patients, no matter where they seek care. That is the gift of nursing. This month and every day let us celebrate that gift and the value it brings. I am proud to be your leader, but I am prouder to be a perioperative nurse.

WILLIAM J. DUFFY

RN, BSN, MJ, CNOR

PRESIDENT