July 2022 President's Letter

Dear NERVES Members:

I’m sending greetings from Birmingham, Alabama to all of you across the U.S.  I hope you are enjoying the summer and getting outdoors, but I also know that many of you are facing scorching deep-south temperatures -- no matter where you live!  The heat this summer is in stark contrast to the cold temps and wind we experienced at our April Annual Meeting in Philadelphia on the rooftop bar that night, right?  The heat from the fire pits and the great personal and professional connections we made that night kept the networking and fun going all the way past closing. I met so many of you at the April meeting, and I’m extraordinarily thankful for that opportunity!

I’m also incredibly honored to be your NERVES President for the April 2022—April 2023 year and I appreciate the chance to work for all of you and our marvelous organization. I especially want to thank Steve Napolitan for his engagement and service as NERVES President this past term.

Our NERVES mission guides ongoing efforts by our Officers, Regional Directors, Liaisons, Committee members, Board of Directors, Management office, and Advisory Board. We bring educational opportunities, survey design, and website and newsletter communications. We offer an AANS, CSNS and Washington liaison voice, strategic planning, annual meeting planning, and membership benefits to the full membership. Our volunteer leaders are constantly in motion and I want to thank everyone involved.

While I know that the effects of COVID-19 continue to disrupt our critical supply chains, HR recruiting, and finances, I also know that we are beginning to move forward with summer travel, masks off (at least in non-clinical areas), higher vaccination rates nationwide, and insight about this new normal. Take a minute to think about all we have been through over the last 2+ years and how we’ve shifted, innovated, and pulled together in ways we couldn’t have imagined before the pandemic. Our NERVES networking, list-serve posts, newsletters, and socio-economic survey all remained very strong. We innovated with educational webinars and virtual mini-meetings to bring our members value.  And we had to be REALLY flexible with our in-person event planning which was cancelled in Vancouver (April 2021), re-planned and cancelled again in Orlando (Oct 2021), then re-planned for Philly (April 2022).  We owe Melissa Klingberg and her management team a huge “thank you” for all the pandemic event planning work.

If you weren’t able to attend our NERVES April meeting in-person, know that you were missed!  We had amazing support from our vendor partners, expert guest speakers, and stimulating break-out sessions.  We had informative roundtables, essential survey trends, actionable Washington updates, and educational coding updates and training. We had a finale from motivational speaker and world-class violinist, Roddy Chong, that got a standing ovation. As I mentioned above, our evening event was tremendous, and we headed home re-energized and motivated to implement new ideas, seek support from our peer connections, and engage vendor partners to assist with our business challenges.

Our leadership team will hold its summer Board of Directors meeting in Vancouver on July 17-19 where committee chairs will report on their efforts since April and detail their upcoming plans, and the Board will work on key items from our Strategic Plan. We want to increase membership numbers, determine key NERVES metrics to track from our 20 year history, and mentor and develop the next generation of NERVES leaders.  Our summer board work keeps the momentum going all year long.

NERVES has put together a conference in September for any of you who are interested in becoming a Spine Center of Excellence, are already a spine center of excellence (bring your expertise!) or need help deciding whether you should. Our first NERVES Spine Conference “Building the Best” at The Intercontinental Chicago - Magnificent Mile is happening September 22-23, 2022.  Get it on your calendar!

Be sure to read our full e-newsletters for all the latest information, and visit the NERVES website regularly.  Log in to see all the Member-only content. And please, please, please update your member profile, including your work cell phone #, so we can reach each other to network.

And check out the upcoming educational webinar schedule, as well as the webinar archives on our website.  If you missed the July 14 NERVES Socio-Economic Survey – Data Reporting 101, watch the archived version so you will be ready to participate in our upcoming annual survey. Remember, the survey data is great and to keep it that way, we need ALL MEMBERS participating to increase the “n”. 

Until I see you next, take care, and thank you for being a part of NERVES!!!

Sincerely,
Donna Bailer
NERVES President, April 2022-April 2023

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