Editor's note: At the 49th annual A...

Editor's note: At the 49th annual AORN Congres in Anaheim, Calif, AORN's Executive Director, Tom Cooper CAE, made moving illustrations during Opening Session regarding the family 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and perioperative nurses' part in society. Following are his expositions The photograph is reprinted with permission from Certification Board Perioperative Nursing.

September 11 was a defining flash in our history that will remain with us for the caesura of our lives. I first learned of the terrorist attacks while onward a plane flying back to observes Angeles from New Zealand, where I had attended the AORN World conversation on Surgical Patient Care. At the World parley perioperative nurses from more than 40 countries came together to share their knowledge and experience with the universal goal of improving the care of surgical patients worldwide. The tremendous contributions of our American members and their willingness to share their wisdom and experience were recognized and appreciated. It was a terrific marked occurrence and a wonderful time of sharing with our international colleagues.

The faces of those international colleagues in a short time faded from memory that week in September, replaced by means of new faces--those of firefighters, police officers, and recover workers--heroes. The tragedy of 9/11 gave national exposing to the faces of ordinary commonalty in extraordinary circumstances--everyday heroes.

Like them, you too are everyday heroes. You are the last bastion of confidence for a damaged health care scheme and the lifeline for surgical patients. Each day, AORN members consign their lives to ensuring the welfare of thousands of surgical patients while enduring lengthy hours, hazardous conditions, double shifts, endles hours forward call, and debilitating verbal abuse. They do it because they care, because their patients ne them, because it is their calling, because they are heroes.

The collective pain and anguish I saw unfolding onward my television screen last September is not often different from the individual pain and suffering being experienced daily in each community across the country. Pain and suffering that is invisible to mostly people, but very visible to you--the young mother with breast cancer; the parents of the 10-year-old with a brain tumor; folks needing bypass surgery or kidney transplants; victims of car accidents, spousal abuse, or gang violence. Like the victims of the tragedy in just discovered York, these people have parents, children, friends, and lov uniteds who are suffering along with them. Ye there were thousands of family victimized by the terrorist attacks in of the present day York and Washington, but there are also across the native land thousands of victims of a variety of ailments that can be helped with surgery each day, in every major city in the nation you provide care for these clan and their families. You are the unsung everyday heroes of the health care rule and like our firefighters and bring off workers, our nation owes you a cyclopean debt of gratitude.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Association of Operating swing Nurses, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group