POULSBO — Nursing care providers and educators will arrive in Poulsbo Jan. 20 from New York and Portland, from Olympia and the North Pole — well, North Pole, Alaska, anyway — and many points in between.

The 25 nursing professionals are scheduled to have their biannual meeting at colleague Diana Blom’s Fjord Drive home, but the date coincides with the Womxn’s March in Seattle. “We’re so torn, because we have a full agenda,” Blom said. “Last year, we went as a group to the Seattle march. We don’t want to miss out, so we are going to have our own.”

The nursing professionals will stage a Womxn’s March in downtown Poulsbo on Jan. 20, and invite interested residents to join them. They’ll meet at 10:15 a.m. at Hot Shots Java. “Bring your posters and hats, and join us for a short march, a walk around downtown,” Blom said.

The professionals are integrative nurse coaches, who partner with healthcare providers, hospitals, home care agencies, and insurance carriers to improve the patient’s health care and control long-term health-care costs. This group of integrative nurse coaches meets biannually in Poulsbo to discuss ways to “move integrative nurse coaching forward in the future,” Blom said.

“We call ourselves a movement in changing how health care is delivered.”

Blom has worked in health care for more than 50 years. She worked at Swedish Medical Center for 30 years, managed home health and hospice programs for Harrison Medical Center, and was a nursing leader at Kaiser Permanente.

It’s fitting that health care professionals would participate in the Womxn’s March, Blom said. “I think the message is, nurses care about health care, the availability of health care for all people, and women’s right to be determinant of their own care.”

If you have questions about the Poulsbo Womxn’s March, call 360-731-5575.

— Richard Walker is managing editor of Kitsap News Group. Contact him at rwalker@soundpublishing.com