Connie Poe-Kochert Establishes the Poe Award to Support Nurse Travel to Pediatric Orthopaedic Meetings
February 06, 2024
Rainbow Orthopaedic Update | Winter 2024
This past year our pediatric orthopaedic nursing department received a generous gift from one of our recently retired nurse practitioners. Connie Poe-Kochert, CPN, was the first nurse practitioner in the Department of Pediatric Orthopaedics at UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital. She helped to pioneer the advanced care given to our pediatric spine patients. Connie established a fund specifically for the continuing medical education of our pediatric orthopaedic nurses, in memory of her sister.
Connie Poe-Kochert, RN, CNPConnie served as a national leader, standing side-by-side with leading scoliosis surgeons at national meetings as she presented research on spine patients from UH Rainbow’s innovative national database, which she helped develop. Connie testified to how much she valued the opportunity to travel with Dr. George Thompson to national meetings and collaborate with others nationally and internationally on important topics.
With this generous gift, we are able to honor the standards and traditions that Connie set years ago. It provides funds for our nurses to attend national and international meetings, which allows UH Rainbow to continue our national presence in the pediatric a community and build on the work and contributions UH Rainbow has provided to pediatric orthopedics over the years.
In 2023, its inaugural year, all of our orthopaedic nurses took advantage of the Poe Gift and participated in continuing educational opportunities. We were also able to send two nurses to the annual International Pediatric Orthopaedic Symposium (IPOS). IPOS is one of the largest teaching courses specifically dedicated to building pediatric orthopaedic surgery knowledge.