Idaho Nurses Recognition Dinner--SOLD OUT

 THIS EVENT SOLD OUT ON OCTOBER 22.  THERE COULD BE SOME TICKETS THAT COME AVAILABLE AT UNFILLED TABLES OR CANCELLATIONS.  PLEASE CALL THE OFFICE 208.367.1171 OR EMAIL RANDHUDS@MSN.COM TO INQUIRE.

The annual dinner to recognize the achievements of nurses will be held Monday, November 4, 2019, at the Riverside Hotel Ballroom starting at 6PM.  This year’s event is being held the first evening of the LEAP conference and is being co-sponsored by the Idaho Center for Nursing, Nurse Leaders of Idaho and the American Nurses Association of Idaho.

Nurse recognition has proven to be a job and career satisfaction activity and is an excellent way to retain and recruit nurses to a facility.  This is more important today then ever before as Idaho, as well as all of the surrounding states, will be facing major nursing shortages because of the current national population shift with retirees moving into the Pacific Northwest and the aging and retirements of the existing nursing workforce.  Idaho is expected to gain near 100,000 new citizens annual for the next 5 years, and 38 percent of all currently licensed Idaho RNs are older than 55 years and will be retiring.  This double demand on the nursing workforce could result in hundreds to thousands of nursing jobs remaining vacant.  Thus, recognition and acknowledgement of professional nursing achievements becomes increasingly important.

In 2018, hospitals, schools of nursing, and other nursing employers recognized the many contributions of their nurses.  These recognitions have been published in RN Idaho throughout the year.  Last year’s event was sold-out at 200 attendees, so this year the seating opportunity has been increased to 250 seats.  Individual nurses, their families, as well as the sponsoring organizations are invited to participate.

The Nurse Recognition Event planning committee, chaired by Claudia Miewald, DNP, APRN-PMHCNS, who is the Director of Behavioral Health at Kootenai Health Systems, Coeur d’Alene, encourages organizations to support the event by sponsoring their nurses and administrators to attend and be recognized.  Any nurse who has become certified, received an award for excellence in practice, been selected as an outstanding educator, preceptor, or mentor or been otherwise recognized is encouraged to be submitted for recognition at the dinner.

The profits from the dinner go to fund continuing nursing education opportunities in Idaho.  The funds from the 2018 event were used to support registration and travel for 7 nurses from Idaho critical access hospitals to attend the Fundamentals of Nursing Leadership course and also to sponsor the February Legislative Awareness Conference that was attended by over 250 Idaho nurses and students.  Funds from previous years have been used to support scholarly work by nursing graduate students and to support an evidenced based practice pilot in critical access hospitals in one region of Idaho. 

The Deadline for Nominations CLOSED October 18, 2019