No Bones About It: A NAON Podcast Series

In   this episode of the NAON No Bones About It podcast, our host, Matt Lowe, talks with some   attendees at the 46thAnnual NAON Congress that was held April 18th to 20th, 2026 in Orlando, Florida. His guests are Desiree Gonzalez, Casey   Hamerle, Michael Smart, and Alana   Tartsinis. They   discuss their orthopedic nursing background and what brought them to this year's congress.

In this episode our host Matt Lowe is joined on the podcast by Jessica Pelkowski, Liz Anderson and Stacia D'Angelo from Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida and Paulina Andujo, Leila Salhi and Tina Chang from Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles to discuss their involvement with Operation Walk International and the impact that orthopaedic medical missions has had not only on the communities they worked wit...

In this episode of the NAON No Bones About It Podcast, our host Matt Lowe speaks with members of the International Collaboration of Orthopaedic Nurses. He welcomes Anita Meehan, Anita Taylor, Julie Santy-Tomlinson and Louise Brent. They discuss the history of the Collaboration, the formation of the International Orthopaedic Nurses Day, the work of ICON and the Fragility Fracture Network. 

On this episode of the NAON No Bones About It Podcast, Our host Matt Lowe speaks with Dr. Sheila Marceron DNP who is a pediatric orthopedic nurse practitioner at Levine Children's Brenner Children's Hospital which is a part of Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and is alsoi the current president of the Pediatric Orthopedic Practitioner Society.

In this episode of the No Bones About It podcast from the National Association of Orthopaedic Nurses, our host Matt Lowe interviews two first time attendees to this year's 45th Annual NAON Congress that was held May 17th through May 20th in Orlando, Florida. His guests this episode are Johanna Camacho and Mike Flores.

Matt Lowe, MDiv, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, ONC is joined by Jimmy Dascani and Dan Veronie from Arthrex, a medical device company and leader in new product development and medical education in orthopedics. Jimmy is a licensed RN and the Healthcare Administrator Relations Director for Arthrex. Dan is a PA and serves as the Senior Clinical Specialist with Arthrex. They talk about Arthex's new product, OrthoP...

Matt Lowe, MDiv, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, ONC sat down with Olivia J Wolf and Kim Wilder to discuss the current challenges, transitions and opportunities they see in orthopaedic nursing and orthopaedic nurse leadership. Olivia J Wolf, MBA, CPC is a healthcare executive, public speaker and physician advocate who sits on the board of directors for the American Association of Orthopaedic Nurses (AAOE) and i...

Matt Lowe, MDiv, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, ONC, sat down onsite at NAON's 44th Annual Congress in Louisville, Kentucky, with two first-time Congress attendees to discuss their journey in the field of orthopaedic nursing. Kellyann Kosma, DNP, APRN, NP-C, is the advanced practice program manager at Hartford Healthcare Bone & Joint Institute, and she discusses her experience as a podium and poster presenter...

Matt Lowe, MDiv, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, ONC sat down with Dr. Mary O'Connor to discuss the impact that social determinants and individual behavior choices can have on musculoskeletal disparities in our nation. Mary is an orthopaedic surgeon with over 23 years of experience at Mayo Clinic and Yale University School of Medicine and is Co-founder and Chief Medical Officer of Vori Health. As the chair of t...

Matt Lowe, MDiv, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, ONC sat down with Christen Nelson RN, BN, ONC to discuss the value of patient optimization prior to orthopaedic surgeries. Christen has been an orthopaedic nurse for 15 years and is currently the lead orthopaedic nurse navigator at Yale Newhaven Hospital. She explains the importance of patient optimization to identify modifiable risk factures for complications po...

Matt Lowe, MDiv, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, ONC sat down with Claire Gill to discuss bone health, osteoporosis, and menopause. Claire Gill is the CEO of the Bone Health and Osteoporosis Foundation, founder of the National Menopause Foundation and hosts the Bone Talk podcast. She shared that 18-20% percent of the population have osteoporosis, and that for those over the age of 50 - about half of all women a...

Matt Lowe, MDiv, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, ONC, sat down with Dr. Karl Siebuhr to discuss technological innovations in orthopaedic surgery. Dr. Siebuhr is a board-certified orthopaedic surgeon who founded Reconstructive Orthopaedics of Central Florida and uses new technologies in his practice due to their positive impacts on patient outcomes. Dr. Siebuhr provided background of how robotic assisted surgery...

Matt Lowe, MDiv, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, ONC, sat down with Diane Jeselskis, BSN, RN, ONC and Lisa Holtz, RN, MSN, ONC, to discuss their organization's practice at combating the opioid epidemic. Traditionally, the healthcare system prescribes opioids to patients with a no pain goal, but the practice has led to a high distribution of opioid use has led to a high distribution of opioid prescriptions and p...

The new host of No Bones About it, Matt Lowe, MDiv, MSN, APRN, FNP-C, ONC, sat down with Jessica Carlson, MSN, RN and Michelle Osborne, DNP, RN, NE-BC at NAON's 43rd Annual Congress to discuss their backgrounds, podium, and poster presentations.   Jessica Carlson, MSN, RN presented the podium session "Journeys to Bone and Joint Wellness with Personalized Education and Treatment Pathways" along wit...

We are so excited to sit down with another organization, the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses (AAOHN) for a discussion with two great Nurse Practitioner educators. Our hosts Jennylynn Balmer and Bryan Combs sit down with Kathleen Geier, and A.J. Benham a great team from Jackson Orthopaedic Foundation. The focus for these educators is on advanced practice nursing in primary care s...

On No Bones About It, Bryan sits down with Chris Hemmer, DNP, ANP-BC, RN, FAANP. Topping the list of patient health issues in the ER are chest pains, abdominal pains, headaches, and MSK conditions such as fractures, dislocations, sprains, back or neck pain. With primary care, back pain or other MSK pain are in the top five for complaints seen in clinics. Chris and Bryan talk about lacking specific...

Orthopaedic Surgery as a specialty has the lowest percentage of female surgeons and has the least diverse representation overall in medicine. We discuss two pipeline programs The Perry Initiative for women and Nth  Dimensions   for minorities in the field of orthopaedics. This month on No Bones About It , NAON sits down with Dr. Toni McLaurin, the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the...

Our guest, Dr. Mo Halawi, is an Orthopaedic Surgeon at Baylor College of Medicine, an Associate Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, and Chief Quality Officer for Musculoskeletal Services at Baylor's St. Luke's Medical Center. Current surgical databases control for differences in demographic, comorbidity and perioperative factors, but lack data on social determinants of health. Surgical databases pla...

In this episode Bryan talks with NAON Member, Roz Puleo, ONP-C, FNP-BC, RCEP about her experience as a Nurse Practitioner working in an outpatient sports medicine setting. The number of Orthopaedic NPs in the area of Sports Medicine and overall musculoskeletal health continue to increase. Sports medicine should be looked at as a more comprehensive arc for a person leading an active lifestyle, not...

Bryan sits down with Jillian Knudsen, RN, MSN, CMSRN, ONC, CNL, CPHQ and Laura C. Arkin, MSN, APRN-CNS, ONC, ONC-A, CCNS, FCNS; two NAON Orthopaedic nurses leading the way with QI projects. Have you asked yourself how to get started with a process improvement? Our experts provide their tips for starting a QI project from types of tests, methodologies, resource allocation or even as simply as divin...

NAON had the pleasure of speaking with Erica Taylor, MD, MBA, FAAOS, FAOA Founder and CEO of the Orthopaedic Diversity Leadership Consortium and Dr. Fred Brown, DNP, RN, CENP Director of Generalist Education to explore Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) principles from their experiences within the field of orthopaedics. Dr. Taylor is  an Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at D...

NAON sits down with Georgia Reiner, Senior Risk Specialist from Nurses Service Organization to discuss nurse liability with electronic health records. Electronic health records (EHRs) create the digital version of a patient's paper chart with a holistic focus on the patient's health going way beyond the standard clinical data. An EHR system is built to share information with other providers so tha...

The roles of orthopaedic RN and NP nurses have evolved greatly into so many areas of healthcare. We'll talk with Alena Ann Groves, DNP, FNP-C, ONP-C and Sally H. Pearson, DNP, FNP, ONC . These very busy orthopaedic nurses are the perfect example for this discussion. They both serve a variety of nursing roles from teaching nursing students, to performing athlete physicals or providing care at stude...

In this episode, NAON talks with Zach Perpetua, MSN, RN, CMSRN, CNL and Michelle Parks, BSN, RN, ONC from UPMC Passavant on their journey to obtain an Orthopaedic Center of Excellence designation. UPMC has established a center of excellence in several specific specialties, including for total joint replacement in July of 2019 and renewed in 2020. The UPMC Orthopaedic Unit began their journey in 20...

In this episode, we speak with NAON Members, Bonnie Rae Koski, RN, MSN, CIC, ONC and Karen Mitchell, BSN, RN to learn more about their experiences with Operation Walk. Operation Walk is a volunteer medical humanitarian organization that provides the gift of mobility through life-changing joint replacement surgeries at no cost to those in need in the U.S. and globally. Through Operation Walk Caroli...