C-E-U’s for Nurses in New Mexico

Carmen Brocklehurst, Albuquerque, NM

After many month of work by several New Mexico TCC Teachers our T’ai Chi Chih proposal asking for Continuing Education Units for Nurses, has been APPROVED by the New Mexico Nurses Association.

Nurses can receive 14.4 credit hours, which is almost half of the required credits needed to renew their certificates every 2 years.

We now have a 12 hour, 8 week course organized according to Objectives, Content, Hourly Schedule, and Instructional Methods, in a language that is acceptable to health educators. A participant can receive credit two ways. They may receive all 14.4 credits for attending the entire class or they may receive partial credit if they are unable to attend all of the classes.

After much work, we now realize that our proposal will also be applicable to other areas of Health Care: Physical Therapists, Art Therapists, Dance Therapists, and Substance-Abuse Therapists. Many doors have opened for us with the approval of this proposal.

The development of our proposal was aided by an earlier proposal submitted by Carol Gustafson and Ellen Tatge, for a Weekend Workshop (six hour course) that they taught. With this proposal, all New Mexico T’ai Chi Chih Teachers, who have submitted the proper credentials to the NM TCC Association, are eligible to offer the CEU credits for Nurses in their classes.

Ellen Tatge has graciously agreed to be the administrator for this project and will maintain the required records on her computer. The Nurses Association prefers to coordinate the record keeping with only one individual from each organization.

If all we (T’ai Chih Chih Teachers) are about is writing proposals, keeping records, offering credits, and filling classes, etc. life would be very cut and dried, with no Joy at all. Thank God that is not true. One of the wonderful blessings that happened because of this proposal, was that late at night Suni McHenry would call me and, with her special sweetness and a Japanese greeting, she would very gently ask how the proposal was going. This would lead to an exchange of information about what we had been doing. At the end of our conversation she would conclude with another Japanese phrase which means “Rest Well” – but then she would add “but not you, you work on the proposal.” We would both laugh and then sweetly she would add her own special words of encouragement. In the end, the proposal was completed because Suni was gracious and asked all of us to come over for spaghetti and to work. Four hours later, magically, we had a rough draft of a proposal.

Ideas, companionship, laughter, suggestions, goodwill, are the gifts that we share with each other in T’ai Chi Chih. I know each group of T’ai Chi Chih Teachers would agree that this is true. For those of you who do not have enough teachers in your area to have a group – plan on going to the Annual Conference in Chicago (this year), – there our Joy is multiplied.

Many thanks to all the New Mexico Teachers who shared their talents so lovingly to help make the Proposal become a reality.