Episode 6: 2025 Annual MICNP Conference

In this episode, Rachel Hetzner and Justin Hooks discuss the upcoming Michigan Council of Nurse Practitioners conference, highlighting the excitement surrounding the event, the various educational sessions, networking opportunities, and keynote speakers. They emphasize the importance of legislative engagement and the role of AI in healthcare, while encouraging attendees to register early to secure their spots.

Takeaways:

• The conference is being held in Metro Detroit, making it more accessible for members.
• There are many engaging sessions planned, including one on full practice authority.
• The education committee has responded to member feedback by offering more pharmacology credits.
• Networking is a key aspect of the conference experience.
• Keynote speakers include a nurse attorney and a motivational speaker.
• The conference will feature a live podcast session.
• AI is a significant topic of discussion and will be addressed in sessions.
• The education committee received over 60 abstracts for this year's conference.
• Attendees are encouraged to register early to avoid waiting lists.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Conference Excitement
04:40 Conference Details and Educational Sessions
07:33 Engagement and Networking Opportunities
10:29 Keynote Speakers and Special Sessions
13:33 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Theme music

• Keyboard, Bass: Clementine Kanfom
• Guitar: Tyler McDonald
• Drums: Andrew Padfield
• Mixed, Mastered: Andrew Padfield

Michigan Council of Nurse Practitioners (MICNP): Website

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Transcript

Rachel Hetzner (01:44) Hello, I'm Rachel Hetzner, President-elect for Michigan Council of Nurse Practitioners and co-host of the MICNP Podcast.

Justin Hooks (01:51) And my name is Justin. the chair of the education committee and also one of the co-hosts of the MyCamp podcast. Welcome back everyone. So yeah, I'm kind of excited because I saw your video that you did for the conference and we're talking about the conference and trying to hype up about it. And I'm really excited. Like our numbers are really getting up there with registration and I'm excited to see everyone come.

Justin Hooks (02:21) How are you feeling about it?

Rachel Hetzner (02:22) I'm super excited. So here's the thing. I am a procrastinator amongst procrastinators and I honestly just recently registered myself as president-elect. Of course I'm gonna register. I knew I was gonna register. ⁓ But I finally registered and I actually just booked my hotel ⁓ yesterday and it feels like I just booked a vacation because I got all excited with that confirmation like, ooh, I'm ready.

Justin Hooks (02:34) Yeah, it's like a staycation right here. And the good thing about it is like it's in Metro Detroit, which is so cool. I know it was, we had Grand Rapids last year, but a lot of our members are in the Metro Detroit area. And so it's closer to home too. And then I'm looking forward to, you probably know more about it you said in legislative committee, they're doing like an axe throwing thing too with the pack of it.

Rachel Hetzner (02:52) yeah, I'm excited. Mm-hmm, a little bit.

the PAC event is an axe throwing thing and you mentioned it being in Metro Detroit and we heard our members, a lot of our members are in the Metro and Ann Arbor chapters. Of course they're everywhere else too, but there's just a high quantity of members there. They wanted it a little bit closer to home, so we made it closer to home. So it makes it a little bit easier for you to go to the conference and

I'm really excited because there's a lot of really good sessions, ⁓ but the only thing is that there are a lot of people coming. So those spots are kind of booking up. I looked at my session on the full practice authority stuff and it said that it's getting quite full. So I'm hoping that everyone who thinks that they might be interested in coming goes and registers and grabs that spot up.

Justin Hooks (04:12) Yeah, I would hate to see people have to be on a waiting list for our conference, especially that it's there. And, you know, like you said, too, from the education side, we listened to our members, which was the big thing. We really took the feedback from our conference last year very seriously. And so they wanted more pharmacology credits. They wanted more engaging sessions. And so we changed things around. And so we have more where we used to historically start off with.

you know, workshops just all Friday morning and afternoon. We're doing just learning labs that are a little bit shorter and cheaper also. And then we're starting the full session. like you said, your session on Friday, we have a lot of legislative sessions and really good professional development. And last I checked yours is definitely very much full right now, which is a good problem to have, I think. And I'm really like looking forward to it.

Rachel Hetzner (05:06)
Yes. Thanks, Nice!

Justin Hooks (05:10) hearing, what do you, what's like a sneak peek that you can tell people about what you're to be talking about?

Rachel Hetzner (05:17) Yeah, so the big thing about mine is kind of the political environment, the climate of policy and how are we going to get our full practice authority bills passed? And there's so many things that influence policy. It's not just here's the research. So obviously we're great providers and you will pass our bill. That's obviously not working. That's not what happens.

So it's the relationships that you build. It's the fact that nurse practitioners are bipartisan. All of these things that affect that political climate and what can we do to take advantage of a good political climate and when should we potentially expect some disappointments and just know that it's time to continue on. And yeah, there's a lot that goes into it and I hope to give people some tools to feel a little bit more confident in working towards these goals that we all have.

Justin Hooks (06:19) Yeah. And I think one word that I can describe how I feel about the upcoming conference is inspired. And I definitely signed up for your talk and I will definitely be there in the front row because I didn't realize how important it is to get involved in engagement with our legislators. And that's something, you know, from the episode that we did on the podcast, the very first one after that, I learned so much that I didn't know. I know going to your session, I'm going to learn a lot more.

Rachel Hetzner (06:50) Yeah, and you're doing a session this time too, right? What's your?

Justin Hooks (06:54) so, yeah, it's a good question. So we're doing the MICNP podcast on Saturday, which is going be live for our members. And this is another way that we're changing things up, flipping the script for our conference to have really engaging sessions. And so for all of our listeners, you get a chance to see Rachel, myself, and we got a really good panel that are going to be talking about what leadership means from the beginner stage all the way to the event. So our listeners are going to be able to see us live in person minus, you know, the usual what they can't see when we're recording this of us being in our PJs or casual clothes. We're going to in sweatpants and stuff like that. So we may have to like change it, but my session is going to be an AI driven session. That's going to be after our on Saturday afternoon, right after our podcast and I want everyone to bring their devices because regardless or not how you feel about it, AI is here and it's not going away anytime soon. And I want to empower people within that session to get more comfortable with AI, feel a little bit better using AI and also look at the benefits of AI to enhance our practice that I use in a daily basis. So I want people to bring their laptops because we're going to go do free versions of chat GPT, another website called open evidence, which is like your PhD level research, a methodologist and ways to enhance everything.

Rachel Hetzner (08:34) That's so fun because a lot of people are intimidated by AI or they just think of all of the negative aspects of it, but there are so many pros and cons that go with it. So I know I will be very interested to go to that one.

Justin Hooks (08:49) Yeah, and we have so many topics and it's so hard, you know, like our registration, you get to the members get to choose what sessions they want to go to, which is a way for us to kind of, you know, like your session, for example, we're going to have to change a bigger room because your session is almost full with the capacity that we have right now. And so we can do some moving around. But I'm also really looking forward to like the networking opportunity and like When you said in your video, when you did the promo that we have on our website, you talked about how it's like your time to meet with your friends. And to be honest with you, I looked forward to meeting with everyone and hearing what the nurse practitioners are doing across the state too, because everyone, we have people that work in rural environments. We have people that work in hospital ⁓ institutions that are even teaching hospitals affiliated with universities. But it's nice to kind of see what people are doing. I'm sure you feel the same way.

Rachel Hetzner (09:54) really fun to just get together and see how everyone's practicing and catch up. I mean there's people that I'll see that I used to practice with before, that I was in school with before, different professors that taught me. It's really neat just getting everyone back together again in a more casual environment on top of going to the sessions. You know the sessions are one thing but that Networking is a huge part of it for me, where it's a little bit more informal and it's definitely fun. It's really fun, I think.

Justin Hooks (10:29) Yeah, I like that. And then I forgot to mention too, it's a three day conference and we have so much packed and we, in my opinion, we had the very best for the last session and we have a keynote with a well known nurse attorney and is going to talk about professional liability, some practice insights. And to be honest with you, I think regardless how proficient you may think you are, everyone deserves a refresher. So we have Diane Klobach, I hope I said her name right, but she's well known as a nurse attorney to kind of educate us.

Rachel Hetzner (11:09) It's so great getting that other perspective too, because we are so far in our clinical niche that it's interesting to get that perspective from an attorney. And then we also have a keynote that is a motivational speaker too, right? Yeah.

Justin Hooks (11:24) So Yannick Hicks ⁓ is really interesting. I met him when I was doing a conference in Indiana and he's a John Maxwell alum. And I didn't realize who John Maxwell was or anything like that. And Yannick Hicks is a PharmD and he is an amazing speaker, has amazing story. And I'm really looking forward to his session. Definitely on Saturday morning to kick everything off. But even more so our kickoff again, before I forget, now that we're talking about keynotes, is we have a returning keynote speaker on Friday. Dr. Deb Lee. Yeah.

Rachel Hetzner (12:04) Who is it? Which one is it? yes, yes. I'm very excited to see her speak too. She's always very good.

Justin Hooks (12:15) Yeah. And it was, we're so fortunate to have her back again as our Friday keynote welcome speaker and her session last year was on AI and she's going to be doing something very similar to that. so you definitely the Friday sessions, you cannot miss out at all for that.

Rachel Hetzner (12:34) Yeah, yeah, yeah. mean, a lot of people I've heard before that some of the sessions and the experience of it all can be redundant, but I think we really broke away from that this year and we have some fresh perspectives and things that people are really interested in. I think it'll be fun. So.

Justin Hooks (12:53)
I think it is. And we even have like pediatric sessions, women's health sessions. the funny, a lot of people don't realize this too. This year for this conference, we had an overwhelming amount of abstracts that were submitted. And we were in previously in the past with our conferences kind of have struggled to, to really get good content. And I tell you the education committee, had over 60 plus.

Rachel Hetzner (13:23)  wow.

Justin Hooks (13:23) abstract submitted, And the Education Committee really had to go through and make a really hard decision and it was not easy. And so we picked the best of the best and the highest ranked for this conference and the Education Committee, I'm telling you, worked so hard on doing that, that now we have a wait list for our next year's conference, which is so crazy. Who would have thought we would have like now a pool to have people

Rachel Hetzner (13:33)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Justin Hooks (13:52)
to use for our next conference, which is our biggest one. 

Rachel Hetzner (13:56)
that's so exciting, so so fun. I always will procrastinate signing up for it, but then by the time it's over I am so glad that I went because it really just like you said it the theme is inspire and you just feel inspired. It's fun. 

Justin Hooks (14:18)
Yeah. And so I'm just looking forward to it. And so for all of our listeners, you can just go to our website at www.micnp.com or I think www.micnp.org, sorry. And so you can go to mycamp.org and go on there. You can sign in through our platform and then follow the links for the conference. If you're still on the fence, if this episode wasn't enough to tease you about how exciting it is,

Rachel Hetzner (14:31)
Word. Word.

Justin Hooks (14:49)
We do have a list of all of our vendors that were, and our sponsors as well that are coming that we're so fortunate for their support as well as the full agenda to choose from. like I said, this year is different than last year because we're now letting you choose the sessions that you want to be a part of, but it's important to register sooner than later because those sessions may be full as they already are. And so. I look forward to seeing everyone there and I think you too. think we're going to have a blast.

Rachel Hetzner (15:21)
Yeah, it's be so fun. I'm excited. So, alright, well yeah it was good talking to you and catching up on all of this stuff and I hope our listeners will show up and be there and we can spend some time together.

Justin Hooks (15:26) And so like all good things, it must come to a wrap. And so that's our quick episode for the MICNP Camp podcast. Continue to like, subscribe, share on social media, follow all of our social media profiles. And again, our members are our most important aspect of our organization and make us so successful like we are. So thank you for tuning in everyone. And we look forward to seeing you there.