Building a highly engaged member is essential to the vitality of any board and organization. One form of engagement is through good communication. The NAON Foundation is one of the intersecting partners with NAON and serves a very important supporting role for all the members. The mission of the Foundation is to provide funding for grants and scholarships to advance orthopaedic nursing practice, research, and leadership. Our key values are to advocate for lifelong learning, empowerment, and stewardship. Those values link us to the NAON members to support their development needs. The support of those needs comes in the form of scholarships and education support, and we would like to highlight those opportunities.
Clara Donahoo, RN, and Joseph Dimon, MD, Memorial Clinical Legacy Lectureship
The purpose of this opportunity is to promote excellence in orthopaedic nursing practice through a lectureship addressing best practices, health policy, or clinical research through a presentation at Annual Congress.
Corporate Scholarships for Congress Education
In the past, these have included Stryker Congress scholarships and Stauffer Kimbrough Foundation scholarships to allow members to attend Congress to obtain the latest specialty education.
Specialty Congress Scholarships
Currently, we have two Congress scholarships provided by families to support NAON member education, which include the Joseph and Octavia Bruemmer Memorial Pediatric Scholarship and the Vernon Clark Military Scholarship.
NAON Past Presidents Leadership Scholarship
This scholarship is by nomination only by current and former members of the NAON Executive Board, current or former NAON Foundation Trustees, as well as former and current Orthopaedic Nursing Editorial Board members. The scholarship, funded by NAON's Past Presidents, is to support the education of a NAON member who has demonstrated leadership in the specialty of orthopaedic nursing.
DJO Global Chapter Scholarship
Is your chapter in need of funding to offer a continuing education conference? If the answer is "yes," then this scholarship could provide some of the funding support you need.
Degree Completion
The NAON Foundation currently has two partners assisting members to reach their goals of advancing their degree through tuition reduction. These partners are Grand Canyon University and Pima Medical Institute.
The most current information regarding scholarships with criteria and application deadlines can be found at http://www.naonfoundation.org.
Of course, these opportunities could not be offered to the NAON members without engagement of corporate supporters, special groups, family endowments, and individual financial engagement. As individual NAON members, many of you have been engaged with the Foundation in the past through donations to the Foundation "Wall," the Congress Health Walk, gathering donations at your local chapter events, or adding loose change to our collection jar in the exhibit hall at Congress or using the shopping search opportunity from our website to gain funds for the organization.
We are hoping that providing an overview of the opportunities offered by the NAON Foundation will engage you in checking our website more often and to consider applying for a scholarship yourself or suggest it to a colleague, to support professional development.