Thursday, January 19, 2017

The Fourth Annual Ilula-Minnesota Healthcare Conference, Day 1



It has been a bit of a whirlwind over the past few days and the new group is a little behind on blog entries.  So I will minimally try to bring up the slack.

When I arrived just after 8 AM at the Primary Health Care Institute (PHCI), there were many attendees already present, chatting and waiting for it to begin.  I wasn’t long until the Ilula crew arrived, however and dug in to registration and set up.  I got the new projector set up and felt pretty smug that the files were all organized and present on the ol’ 2008 Mac Book and raring to go.  Oh, that new projector is nice! 

Colleagues were putting out the sign-in sheet and distributing snazzy packets, each with a notebook, a couple evaluation sheets, a pen (Blue Pilot G-2 07) and a USB drive with all the lectures and handouts on it.  (There was applause for that!)  That made access to the info much easier and the drives have lots more room for storage.

After all were properly signed in and formal introductions made, Rev. Peter Harrits gave an insightful meditation and invocation, comparing the attendees to the devoted and faithful caregivers of the man lowered through the roof so Jesus could heal him.  This is an apt description of the hospital staffs at the conference, clinicians, nurses, pharmacists, administrators, nursing school principals and others.  Each and every one of the presentations was excellent!  And more to come tomorrow.  We were honored to have a guest speaker, Dr. Jose Debes who capped off the day.  All the talks were excellent and Louise Myers gave an outstanding keynote.  The other speakers for today and tomorrow are listed to the right, since they are also the blog authors and conference faculty.

Our faculty and attendees were honored by a group from Gustavus Adolphus College on interim, led by veteran African traveler Barb Zust, who brought her guitar-playing brother as accompaniment for the groups excellent mini-concert.  The entire audience loved it!

There are photos to post too, but that will wait a day or so!

Ken

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