Board Update

Gail Bagwell, DNP APRN CNS
NANN President

Greetings from the NANN Board of Directors! As the new President of NANN, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to you. I am a clinical nurse specialist who does outreach for Nationwide Children's Hospital Neonatal Network in Columbus, OH. I currently work with over 25 referring hospitals that send their sick and premature neonates to any of our 10 NICUs/SCNs within our network. I provide education to their staff; consult on neonatal topics and level-of-care information; and work as a liaison between them and a variety of state agencies and committees, assuring that they have the most up-to-date information on Ohio laws related to maternity and neonatal care. In my spare time, I love spending time with my husband, David, and our 12-year-old black lab, Abby.

I have been a NANN member since the late 1980s and have volunteered my time at both the local and national level. At the local level, I chaired the program, bylaws, and nominations committees, served as president of the Central Ohio chapter twice, from 1996 to 1997 and again from 2002 to 2003, and most recently served on the board of directors. At the national level, I was the CNS representative on the NANN Advanced Practice White Paper, a member of the CNS Taskforce to write the core competencies and education standards, and editor for the recently released NANN Safe Sleep Guideline. In 2015, I served as a director at large for the NANN Board of Directors, and in 2019, I became president-elect. I am truly humbled and honored to have been nominated and elected as the president of our great organization! I look forward to working with many of you in the next 2 years and meeting many of you in person during my term when it's safe to do so.

I would be remiss if I did not thank our Immediate Past President Joan Rikli for her great leadership of our organization for the past 2 years as well as her mentorship during my term as president-elect. Joan, your vision and guidance during your term has helped NANN become the premier neonatal nursing organization. Under your leadership during this pandemic, you were able to guide the board and NANN staff to make the hard decision to change to a virtual format for our annual conference.

Speaking of conference, we hosted our first live virtual conference from October 21 to 23. Our first NANN Virtual was a huge success, with over 1,100 registered attendees. Attendees and vendors alike spoke highly of the conference content and the easy-to-use virtual platform. A huge thank you goes to Rebecca Buchholtz, RN MSN NNP-BC; Mary Puchalski, DNP NNP-BC; and the Annual Conference Committee for their great work in developing and executing our first virtual conference on short notice.

If you missed registering for the conference, it's not too late! Register today and be able to obtain CE credit until March 1, 2021! While NANN Virtual was a wonderful opportunity to learn and connect, please mark your calendars as we hope that we will be able to meet in person in Denver from September 15 to 28, 2021!

Until our next update, I wish everyone a wonderful and safe holiday season!

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