President’s Message

Joyce Willens, PhD, RN-BC

Spring and the Annual Face-to-Face Board Meeting

Your Board of Directors meets face to face twice a year, once at the National Conference and once in Kansas at our executive headquarters. We meet at the executive headquarters of our management company because it saves us money. If we met elsewhere, we'd have to pay to Jerrie Lynn's (our Executive Director) travel expenses, two days of conference rooms, projectors and computers. In case you didn't know, we also have quarterly conference calls as your governing body.

ASPMN will be present at the Pain Action Alliance to Implement a National Strategy (PAINS) meeting next week in Kansas City. The main goal is to provide a foundation for a proposal  for partnership between the Missouri Primary Care Association and the Center for Practical Bioethics. We will also work on developing plans for a national pain meeting to be held in the fall of 2013. In addition to the Steering Committee meeting, I will be attending the Joan Berkley Bioethics Symposium also in Kansas City. I am excited to attend and will let you all know how it goes!

ASPMN recently supported a grant proposal entitled, "Improved understanding, satisfaction and pain management with the use of a patient-specific perioperative pain passport" that was submitted to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute's (PCORI) call for proposals under the program "Assessment of Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment Options." Darin J. Correll, M.D will be spearheading the project. We'll keep you posted!

I hope Spring has finally arrived to you!  As reported last month, we are already in the throes of major planning for our conference in October - this is our main event so we hope to see you there!

Wishing you all the best,