The Nursing Salon Experience: A Tale of Hosting Conversations.

Abstract

The table was set for a party of eight. A whole chicken roasted away in my crockpot, a pile of pesto pasta chilled in my fridge, and my freezer was stocked with a wide array of gourmet popsicles. I texted a friend to air out the butterflies in my stomach the hour before guests arrived for my first nursing salon. Her response helped my butterflies out of the cocoon. "You've so got this. You are marrying the things you are best at-hospitality, conversation, and action. This can only produce good things."And so it is . . . producing good things.Hosting salons in my home is giving me food for thought for my writing habit and blog, housed at http://www.thereflectivenurse.com. Someday, I would like to expand on the themes raised in conversation salons around my dining room table to create educational offerings for nurses to earn continuing education units. So many good things in life start with a conversation. As heralded on my website, Eric Utne's introduction to The Joy of Conversation: The Complete Guide to Salons describes salon gatherings as a potential turning point in American history today in which talking among ourselves can in fact be glamorous and evocative of 17th-Century Paris (Sandra, 1997). Glamour aside, connecting through live, intimate conversation is being proven once again to meet a basic human need to recognize each other's light.Here is some context on what inspired this adventure in hosting conversation salons. I was invited to my first nursing salon as a student nurse some ten years ago. Hosted by Marie Manthey, her salons always guaranteed the comforts of a warm welcome, a home-served meal, and a conversation circle that expanded my vision for my place in my profession. Praise for attending salons in Marie Manthey's home is well-documented, from past features in this journal to the word-of-mouth testimonials that have grown her modest idea into a phenomenon that has occurred for some 15 years, inspiring people like me to start something similar.At the turn of the year, I decided this was the year to host my first salon. A nurse since 2008-call it the seven-year itch? I felt ready for a new challenge and a new forum for reflecting on the job I do, and the horizons I have chased since becoming a nurse. Plus, I love any excuse to throw a dinner party.My work as a volunteer coordinator at a pediatric hospital exposed me to the many faces of nursing. A nurse who edited a series by this same title, The Many Faces of Nursing, for the nursing department newsletter invited me to a salon in Marie's home during my formative years as a nurse in the wings. Reading the stories of the many and varied ways one can be a nurse and meeting the many and varied professionals who came together to form the monthly circle in Marie's home exposed me to the breadth and depth of the calling that is nursing. Fast-forward a decade. Having answered my calling and feeling established in my work as a nurse, I decided the time was right to start a salon of my own. I am forever inspired by hearing how people found their way to answer whatever called them to their life's work, and my kitchen table is forever enhanced by hosting a platform for these stories to be told.My path in nursing has included work as a bedside nurse in pediatrics and family birth. …