Hello AONN 2025!

Third time’s the charm. I went to my first AONN conference as a wide-eyed attendee. I came back a few years later to keynote. This year I get to do it again.

Nurse navigation changed the history of cancer survivorship. Full stop. If I carved a Mount Rushmore of patient progress over the last two decades, nurse navigation and its reimbursement would sit up there with dignity. It made the impossible doable. It kept patients from drowning in paperwork and despair. It gave the system a conscience.

You don’t see their names in headlines. You don’t see them quoted in glossy magazines. Yet without them, the entire cancer experience collapses. Every appointment scheduled, every question answered, every family calmed, every treatment course clarified. That invisible scaffolding is nurse navigation.

I’m not showing up to tell them how great they are. I’m showing up as a fanboy, a survivor, and a member of a community that knows the score. If they didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done.

Here’s to the navigators. The unsung, the overlooked, the ones who keep the lights on for patients who can barely see straight. I’ll see you at AONN.

SOURCE ➡️ https://aonnonline.org/conferences/annual-conference