Open House

Organizing a fun, educational celebration for nurses

By Chuleenan Svetvilas

National Nurse magazine - July | Aug | Sept 2026 Issue

Plinko games, raffle tickets, clever booths, and free food. No, it’s not your local carnival, it’s a Professional Practice Committee open house!

“We’ve organized and hosted an open house for inpatient nurses since 2019,” says Shellane Raymundo, RN in the float pool at Kaiser South San Francisco. “The goal is to inspire and uplift and create opportunities for our colleagues to connect and give back. It’s a fun, educational celebration in a welcoming atmosphere where everyone feels valued and appreciated.”

Education and information is vital to an effective Professional Practice Committee (PPC), an essential committee elected by the nurses and representing each major nursing unit in the facility. The PPC usually meets monthly on paid time and is an essential part of contracts negotiated by California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC), an affiliate of National Nurses United (NNU). The PPC has the authority to document unsafe practices and the power to meet with management and make real changes across the facility. “Knowledge is power,” notes Raymundo, chair of the PPC at Kaiser South San Francisco. 

In 2019, Raymundo noticed that management organized fewer Nurses Week activities so to reinvigorate this celebration, she proposed organizing a PPC open house, timed to coincide with Nurses Week in May. “We told management that the open house would be a wonderful opportunity to show our gratitude and support for our nurses,” says Raymundo, who has been a PPC member for more than 10 years. 

Since then, the Kaiser South San Francisco event has evolved into a biannual eight-hour affair so nurses on all shifts can attend. Held in May and December, the PPC organizes interactive educational booths focused on different issues. Members sign in, get a raffle ticket, and once they have visited each booth, they get a goody bag and can grab a bite to eat. Raffle prize winners are selected throughout the day, with nurses winning succulent plants, See’s Candies gift certificates, coffee gift cards, and more.

The PPC members cover all expenses and decide which topics to cover, for example, fall prevention, floating, retirement, the grievance process, ADOs, EPIC, clinical ladder, and more. To make the booths entertaining as well as educational, each PPC member picks a topic and creates an engaging poster, often a large tri-fold display board with a fun game to play or a puzzle to solve. To win a prize (toys, chocolate, pens, etc.), you must answer a question about the topic. 

One year Raymundo created a display about fall prevention, complete with images of nurses and falling patients along with a Plinko game. Raymundo would have a brief discussion about preventing falls and then the nurse would play Plinko, which was a fun way for her to assess their understanding of the information they covered. Then they could get a sticky wall climber figure as a giveaway. To demo the figure’s falling, one side of her display was partially covered with clear plexiglass so Raymundo could show the figure sticking to the glass and falling end over end, the perfect prize for her booth.

“The PPC is different from other committees,” says Raymundo. “It’s one of the only committees written in our contract with the members elected by nurses. We are elected and that means our colleagues put their trust in us. We are the voices of our nurses. If we are not there, who will voice our safety concerns to our management?”

Chuleenan Svetvilas is a communications specialist at National Nurses United