REGION NEWS

New Jersey Nurse, Jan/Feb 2004

The schedule for meetings 2004 was planned as follows (Meetings start at 6:00 PM):

Feb. 3, 2004 (Tues.) and April 1, 2004 (Thurs.) at Convention. The Convention dates are March 31, 2004, to April 2, 2004. Other sites not listed will be announced at a later date.

REGION 4

Roseanne Best Dougherty, RN VP Communications

The Region 4 board held its second meeting in November and once again a busy year is in the works. We discussed plans for a fundraiser as well as our annual dinner and future meeting dates. The board members will also be reviewing Region 4 Bylaws this year.

Maurene Atzori, Member-atLarge Somerset will be attending a conference on biotorrorism through Somerset County Advisory Board. Somerset Medical Center has become clinical research affiliate of Cancer Institute of NJ and University Medical Center at Princeton now has inpatient hospice. The Student Nurses Association at St. Francis Medical Center, under the leadership of faculty advisor Mary Anne Lush, collected food for the families of Children's Future. The food baskets, added to generous donations of toys and clothing from several community organizations, made Christmas a whole lot brighter for many families in Trenton's East Ward.

The Region 4 research award is still available. If you are interested, contact Ita Zafar at ita@njsna.org. The next meeting for Region 4 will be Thursday January 22, 2004 at the NJSNA headquarters on Pennington Road. Any member is welcome so come out and join us. A light dinner will be served.

If you would like to share any news or items of interest with the region e-mail them to rbestdougherty@ che-east.org. We want to hear all the great things that are going on out there!

REGION 6

Anne Vitale, RN VP Communications

On November 11, Region 6 held our 2nd dinner meeting for the calendar year at Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel. Many thanks to Marti McGregor and Donna Angelucci for organizing the program, and especially to Bayshore Community Hospital for underwriting the guest speaker donation. The program included a presentation and overview of the Recovery and Monitoring Program of NJ (RAMP), a program initiated by the Institute for Nursing. Congratulations! The speaker, Joanne Cole, RNC, RAMP Director, supplied timely information for our members on this long-awaited advocacy program for nurses. The next dinner meeting will be in March, to be held in Atlantic County-more info to come! Mark your calendars for May, 2004 for Region 6's dinner program to be held in Cape May County, and June 9 will be our Annual dinner program. Look for upcoming flyers to these exciting events, and come out to network with your nursing colleagues.

Don't forget to sign up for NJSNA Convention in April. Over the last several years, Region 6 and other NJSNA Convention attendees have been attending an annual Comedy Night during convention, which this year will be on April Fool's Day! For more information about Comedy Night, contact Region 6 President, Linda Gumina, at lguminax4@aol.com