March 3, 2008

Greetings to the 5,000 nation-wide KAORN members!

Hello. As the 11th president of the Korean Association of Operating Room Nurses (KAORN), I would like to offer my official welcome as well as heartfelt gratitude for having voted for me as the new head of our organization.

I personally take your support and confidence in me as the sign of your trust in and the brighter future of our profession and hereby swear to do my utmost to lead our association with the experience and knowledge I have had accumulated over the years as a practicing nurse and nursing educator.

During my term, I will work hard to particularly improve the work condition of operating room nurses and the quality, as well as education, protection of our rights and interests, local and overseas exchange and the globalization of Korean operating room nursing practices as the top priorities. By collaborating and working closely with our newly appointed staff, I swear I will lead our organization to the next level.

As you are well aware, my dear members, KARON has made some remarkable advancement over the past 20 years. As the fruit of all OR nursing professionals’ undivided dedication and passion, we have successfully developed the OR nursing practice guidelines and have contributed to the improvement of OR environment and the quality of nursing across the country. As a result, we have been able to provide patients better, more improved nursing services.

Since 2004, we have also launched an initiative to revitalize provincial nursing practice by giving bull sessions and re-education and training opportunities in Busan, Daegu and Gwanju among other places. In the US and Singapore, we also engaged ourselves in training programs that allowed for an opportunity to focus on learning the OR nursing skills and developments of some of the world’s top-notch hospitals, which still continues to date.

More recently, the provincial promotion initiative we had launched is now showing stable operations, though yet to be matured. And we have also successfully finished the World Conference on Surgical Patient Care, which, we believe, served to advertise Korean nursing power to the world-wide fellow professionals.

Instead of resting on our laurels, however, we now must renew our commitment to focus on substance, not appearance. We must not stop our march into the newer vision, and the brighter future, of OR nursing.

Specifically, we must encourage ourselves to seek even higher levels of expertise, consistently research and practice the ever newer, ever-evolving knowledge and skills, and engage in information exchange and cooperation.

In order to turn those ambitions into a tangible outcome, we are planning on implementing an intensive OR training program and updating our association web site, having it transformed to serve as the focal point where we can further purse information exchange, provision and sharing, to provide you practical help and support with your OR practice. Reviving our local as well as international exchange and cooperation is another idea we’ll be exploring to secure as many opportunities as we can to offer our members a chance-of-a-lifetime to learn from the advanced countries’ latest OR practices.

My dear colleagues and members, all of us here today, we OR nurses, shall vow to be one to expand our horizons for the coming years, to be more aggressive in our efforts to create a global operating room nurses society based on cooperation and exchange.

Such endeavors cannot be fulfilled by my own doing alone; I most definitely need you and need your active participation, support and prayer.

Now, I put my trust in you, hoping and asking for your unstinted, and continuous, love and enthusiasm for what I am about to do, with you, as the next president of KAORN.

In this beautiful season of spring, with all those buds blooming into lovely blossoms, I wish you, your family and your workplace prosperity and happiness, and, again, I give you my word to do my very best to meet your expectations as we begin our new term.

Thank you.