(GS1) General Session - Opening Keynote: Kneeling at the Curb: Street Medicine Wound and Foot Care and the Renewal of Nursing’s Core

Nursing is under strain. Many nurses describe a widening distance between the work they are asked to do and the reasons they entered the profession, and for some that distance becomes the reason they leave. Wound, ostomy, and continence nurses are not exempt. Over time, specialty expertise can narrow into procedure and product while the human relationship that gives the work its meaning recedes from view. This keynote addresses that gap. Drawing on nearly four decades with Mercy Care’s Street Medicine Program in Atlanta, which he started, and 15 years as its wound and foot specialist, Dr. Tim Porter-O’Grady takes participants to the curbside, where wound and foot care for people living unsheltered calls on the full range of nursing at once: clinical judgment exercised without the scaffolding of a clinic, trauma-informed presence with persons whose trust has been broken many times, and the creative adaptation of evidence-based care to the realities of the street. Through stories from practice and current evidence on wound and foot care for people experiencing homelessness, he shows how this work restores what nursing is at its core: knowledge, relationship, and moral obligation held together in a single act of care. He reflects, too, on how this practice has grounded his consulting, writing, and leadership across 53 years in the profession. Participants will leave encouraged, renewed, and clearer about how to carry that core back into their own practice, whatever its setting.