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July 2004 |
Volume
13, Issue 3 |
 How
to Survive a Congress Topic Submission
Gabriela Kaplan,
RN, MSN, AOCN®
Coordinator, Ethics SIG
It was the end of Congress 2003. I was feeling “full of beans”
as I just had assumed the SIG coordinator role. I was thinking, “This
is pretty cool. I can make a contribution.” That was my
first mistake. Regardless, in my enthusiastic spirit, I submitted
a Congress topic that I believed would be a great learning opportunity—that
is, I would learn something from listening to someone else. I had no
idea that the topic you submit is yours. If it is picked, you get to
coordinate, present, worry, obsess, etc. Mistake number two:
Never submit a topic about which you know nothing!
My rude awakening
came in the summer of 2003, when Nancy Dahlberg, MSN, OCN®, APRN-BC,
of the Congress Team called and said, “Congratulations, your topic
has been picked for a pre-Congress session.” After my initial
shock (What exactly did I submit? Where were my brain cells at the time?),
I allowed my hubris to accept the honor. Nancy assured me that she and
the Congress Team were there to help and offer support.
I won’t spend a lot of time describing the agony of locating geographically
diverse oncology nurses to be speakers. I simply will say that when
I was truly desperate because I could not find such people, the Congress
Team gave me permission to ask a non-nurse (a genetic counselor) to
speak. I was truly grateful for that leniency and also for the flexibility
of my speaker, who traversed the country the week of Congress to accommodate
my request.
I will offer a few words about appropriate speaker selection.
- Never ask someone to speak who is in the process of moving and has
no e-mail.
- Never ask someone to speak if it takes three tries to contact him
or her before he or she responds.
- Never ask someone to speak if he or she doesn’t respond to
e-mail or phone messages.
- Stick to your guns. If you think someone will be great, even if
he or she is not a geographically diverse oncology nurse, insist on
including that person.
Let it be known that by the time Congress was upon us, I actually was
able to do all the right things. Many, many thanks to Joanne Tripodes,
ONS Meeting Services Administrative Assistant, and the ONS Information
Technology Team members, who walked me through the electronic submission
process.
I had survived speaker selection, objectives, receiving all presentations,
melding them together, getting them onto the right place on the site,
and coordinating and submitting the bibliographies. Nancy, the pre-Congress
coordinator, reminded me that the final version of the session had to
be uploaded. I contacted all speakers, heard back from two (not the third),
got it all together, and uploaded. Congress was fast approaching. I e-mailed
my panel members to tell them where I would be staying and how much I
was looking forward to actually meeting them.
Pre-Congress arrived. In Anaheim, CA, on the Tuesday before Congress,
I checked in. I was still coherent, not calm, just coherent. I hiked over
to the convention center and went to the speaker check-in booth, only
to be told that they never had heard of me. I did not panic, I simply
asked in which room my session was being held. I went there. My colleague
graciously got my things but told me that ONS did not have a nametag for
me. ONS had my ticket for the ONS/Schering Oncology Clinical Lecture and
the Recognition Breakfast for Oncology Certified Nurses, but a nametag
was not found. (They made one on the spot). I refused to consider this
an evil omen.
Fifteen minutes before the start of the session, Nancy came in to introduce
herself and asked if all was well. I replied that I had not heard from
speaker number two. I asked whether she had heard from her. At that point,
we started calling our hotel rooms for voice mail messages, our work phones
for voice mail messages, and even the speaker’s family to see if
everything was OK.
When it was time to start the session, we were missing a speaker. As the
chest pain was setting in, I looked at a colleague in mute desperation.
Remember, I picked a topic about which I essentially knew nothing! The
speaker order was changed. My colleague spoke first. Then the genetic
counselor. While the counselor was speaking, my colleague ran to the computer
center and quickly reviewed an article she wrote so that she could speak
instead of our “missing person.”
I survived this experience. Would I do this again? Would you believe that
I actually agreed to present at this year’s Institutes of Learning
in Nashville, TN? I’m not sure that I believe it! I can say unequivocally
that I am eternally grateful for my nursing and non-nursing colleagues
who stepped into the breach and helped present an excellent pre-Congress
session. The support that was palpable from the audience, as well as the
speaker panel, made it an experience to cherish.
Back
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The
SIGnal is a quarterly e-newsletter
published by the Oncology Nursing Society
for special interest group leaders.
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