ONS Board Makes Changes to National Conference Offerings for 2012

Monday, April 11, 2011

The ONS Board of Directors approved some exciting new changes to ONS’s national conference offerings at its March 2011 meeting. These changes are in direct response to customer feedback and the changing landscape of healthcare meetings and education.

Instead of offering four national conferences as we have done for many years, ONS will move to a new model of two national conferences per year. Congress will remain as usual and will include content of interest to all nurses, along with Special Interest Group (SIG), Annual Business, and Town Hall meetings.

The fall meetings will be replaced with one national conference to address the combined audience of researchers and advanced practice nurses (APNs) who are conducting and applying evidence to the care for patients with cancer. The meeting will offer intermediate- to advanced-level clinical content with pre-conference skills workshops. Incorporating an interdisciplinary focus, the meeting will additionally target non-oncology APNs, researchers, clinical trials nurses, and graduate students. Advanced Nursing Research, Nurse Practitioner, and Clinical Nurse Specialist SIG meetings, as well as a Town Hall meeting, will be included in conference programming.

These changes were made in response to feedback from members and changes in today’s professional education environment. ONS has heard from members via surveys, evaluations, and anecdotally that regional live conferences and online CNE are more appealing in the current healthcare climate. Employer-provided financial support, as well as the ability to take time off work, has been reduced or eliminated for many nurses in recent years. Additionally, attendance at ONS national conferences has remained flat or gone down over the past three years, especially at the Institutes of Learning meetings.

Marketing trends support an increased preference for more targeted programs and services that meet individualized needs. ONS also has a strategic interest in meeting the oncology-related learning needs of all nurses who care for individuals with cancer but are not oncology specialists. All of these factors led to a review of ONS’s current offerings and recommendations for changes in the personality of the various options.

“Multiple perspectives were considered in making the final decision, including the timing of both conferences, other competing meetings, and the volunteer voice,” said President Carlton G. Brown, RN, PhD, AOCN^®. “The Board made the decision based on what they felt was best for the organization moving forward.”

The 2011 conferences will remain in their current format. The 2011 Congress is scheduled for April 28-May 1 in Boston, MA, and the Institutes of Learning/APN Conferences will be held in November 2011 in Salt Lake City, UT. The above mentioned changes are scheduled to begin in 2012. The 37^th ONS Annual Congress is scheduled for May 3-6, 2012, in New Orleans, LA. The new format Research APN Conference will begin in November 2012.

To learn more about ONS’s national conferences, visit our website at www.ons.org/cnecentral. As always, to provide feedback to the ONS Board of Directors and ONS, send your comments and suggestions to suggestionbox@ons.org.