Did You Know You Can Tailor Your Own Personal ONS Congress® Schedule? Here's How
Planning Team Member
ONS Congress is right around the corner, and I am excited to share how you can stay organized and plan how you want to spend your days during the five-day conference.
Many resources are available to help you tailor your personal schedule for ONS Congress. The best place to start is the schedule website, which will double as the ONS Congress app. Download it by searching for “ONS Congress” in the App Store or Google Play. Remember to use the same username and password when logging in to the website or the app. This way, if you update something using your computer at home, it will appear in the app so you can use it in Washington, DC.
You will also receive the official ONS Congress Guide when you pick up your badge on site. This guide includes a schedule that you use to pick key sessions and activities you want to attend, but please note that the most up-to-date schedule can be found in the app.
Here are some tips on how to build your schedule. First, let’s talk about the five session tracks offered at ONS Congress: Advanced Practice, Clinical Practice, Management/Staff Education, Radiation, and Research. You can build your schedule based on tracks or by topics that interest you. Making a schedule for each day will help you get the most out of your time. I like to use the ONS Congress Guide to read the topics and circle the sessions I am interested in. I may customize my schedule to include sessions from a variety of tracks. For example, I am interested in Bridging the Gap Between DNP and PhD Nurses in Practice (Advanced Practice track), but I also am interested in Understanding Financial Burdens Among Cancer Survivors (Management/Staff Education track). I love being able to mix and match sessions within the tracks to meet my learning needs.
If you choose to build your schedule on the website or the app, log in and navigate to the left side where you can use the gray box to choose how you would like to filter the sessions. You can use the search function to find a person, topic, organization, city, and more. You can pull up the official schedule and look at the sessions in a certain track or by individual learning needs assessment (ILNA) categories (items to meet your ONCC Certification requirements). The possibilities are endless.
To add sessions to your personal schedule, select a session of interest, and click on the plus sign in the upper left corner, underneath the session title. Once you begin creating your personal schedule, you can find it by selecting “Home” from the gray box and scrolling down to find “My Schedule.”
On the schedule website and app, you can also find session handouts that you can review during the presentation, as well as which ones will be offered as recorded sessions after the conference concludes.
Now that you know how to make your schedule, here are some additional session types that you won’t want to miss: Power sessions, industry-supported sessions, project presentations, and poster sessions. You can add these to your schedule too. Please note that some industry-supported sessions may require separate registration. Those that require registration will say so in the session description. Pro tip: Attend the poster sessions in person and ask the presenters questions about their research, or you can open that poster session on the website or app and review the poster on your own time.
To earn your nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) contact hours, it’s a great idea to begin filling out your evaluation immediately after you have attended a session so that you can give real-time feedback. Just make sure you don’t submit it until you’re finished evaluating each session. Evaluations are due by 11:59 pm ET on May 16, 2024.
The above information should give you a good start to your schedule at ONS Congress. Remember to take some time for yourself in the Learning Hall and check out what the vendors have for you to learn about, visit the ONS Zen Den, pick up some fun giveaways and treats, and even pet some puppies.
If this is your first time at ONS Congress, join us for one of our ONS Congress 101 sessions to help you get organized for all learning possibilities. As always, a member of the ONS Congress Planning Team or ONS staff is happy to help you navigate through this amazing experience. We can’t wait to see you in Washington, DC.
There’s still time to join us, register today to ignite the extraordinary possibilities.