The airport code for Toronto CANADA is yyz..........but this weekend I am re-naming the airport code yy....me! My trip started off rough. I took off from ORD after a 1 hour delay for mechanical problems with the plane. After picking up an expensive rental car (price raised due to the holidays) I was off to see family. I spent the first night enjoying dinner cooked by a famous Canadian chef Michael Stadtlander. The dinner table was beautiful.....4 forks, 3 spoons, and 2 knives, champagne, white wine, Bordeaux, Burgandy, desert wine and port. The food included lobster soup, Lake Huron pickeral (delicious), duck, and venison.

Unfortunately the travel back to Milwaukee was rough. New security regulations! Full pat down. But I am home safe and sound..........and back to work.

Today I graduated from Marquette University.

The morning ceremony included all 560 graduates from MU.

I spoke at the Graduation for the College of Nursing students in the afternoon.

Here is my speech: 

Dean Callahan, Faculty members, family, friends and fellow graduates, today is a day to be thankful, and to be inspired.

We have much so to be thankful for. We are thankful for our families. Earning any degree requires time away from one’s family. Our families have made sacrifices of time and other resources to give us the freedom to get this education and the degrees that represent it. They also have supported us along the way, often when we had little to give back in return. So thank you, families. What we receive today is yours, too.

We students also must thank each other, because in our time here at Marquette we have become each other’s extended family, and we have benefitted from the insight, kindness and support, of each other. Thank you, our extended families. We worked together on projects, and in study groups, and our accomplishment today owes much to our collaborating with each other.

Above all we owe thanks to the faculty here at the Marquette University College of Nursing, from whom we have received an outstanding education, thanks to the specifically Jesuit tradition of service to others, which grounds the curriculum. We have learned by their example and direct experience in our coursework, and in the research and education practicums. You have lifted us up when we needed it, and have brought us down to earth when we needed it—we’re supposed to be thankful for that, too, right? Thank you, faculty, for being a source of learning and wisdom, and for being models that inspire.

Thanks to our cumulative experience here at Marquette we are well prepared to enter, or continue in, the noble profession of nursing—what is noble if not caring for the health needs of God’s children? But our profession, like God’s children, is constantly changing. Today we are prepared to be both participants and leaders in the change.

For there will be work to do.

Fast-paced changes are coming upon us, as we work to keep up with improvements in technology aimed at keeping patients safer. Some recent changes include bar-coding of medications, electronic health records, and a raft of new policies and procedures to go along with all the changes.

The future of the discipline of Nursing includes a predicted nursing shortage, which will impact how we deliver care. There will be fewer of us, we will have more to do, more to learn, and a larger and more complex population to serve. We will have to be smart, and get smarter. Our future will include incorporating new technology, but we will also be called upon to not lose focus on the patient perspective of health and illness experience. And as we succeed we will paradoxically be asked to succeed even more. The better we get, the better we’d better get.

Our Marquette education prepares us to participate and lead in the effort to assess the supports that are truly supportive for patients and families. We will remember to incorporate the knowledge we have acquired about important concepts such as self-management, health literacy, health risks, end-of-life care, health promotion, prevention programs for obesity, and programs that will help families cope.

Thank you families and Marquette, for getting us this far. We will always think of you as we go farther.

Flanders Fields

 by John McCrae (1915)

 In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

 ________________________________________________________________________________

When I was a child my dad, a WWII vet, taught me this poem. I still remember him getting up on Nov. 11th every year, putting on his Irish Regiment hat , Legion jacket and war medals and going to march in the Remembrance day parade. The parade ended at the Weston War Memorial pictured below.

My dad died in 2004 at the age of 84  years old. I think about him the most on the holidays, and on Remembrance day. Rest in peace dad. We miss you.

Rick Guidotti spoke at Nursing Grand Rounds and at the Pediatric Nursing Conference yesterday here in Milwaukee (organized by the education department at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin). He was inspiring!