Report of CYP events at Congress 2013

Published: 29 April 2013

Recreational drug use: Congress matter for discussion

The RCN CYP Staying Health Forum successfully proposed a matter for discussion on recreational drug use and a report can be found here on the Congress webpages, along with a recording of the debate.

Improving nurses' understanding of recreational drug use - event report

The Staying Healthy Forum put on a fringe event at Congress to support and supplement the corresponding agenda item. It was introduced by RCN Council Member for the East Midlands David Harding-Price and myself, CYP Staying Healthy Forum committee member Mervyn Townley, who then facilitated a stimulating discussion and question session at the end.

Due to unforeseen circumstances one of the original keynote speakers was unavailable and the presentation part of the fringe was given by Taylor Jones, a specialist substance misuse worker from South Wales. She gave an exceptionally professional and very interesting presentation on the impact of taking recreational drugs. She included a mumber of slides demonstrating the effects on spiders building their webs following drug use which proved very informative and entertaining. She followed this with a case presentation which provoked excellent debate and discussion. 70 nurses attended the fringe and anecdotal evaluation afterwards suggested this was one of the most successful fringes I have been involved in. The presentation is available to download here (PDF 551KB).  

Mervyn Townley
Consultant Nurse, Specialist CAMHS

Communicating bad news: a challenging area of practice - event report

The RCN CYP Specialist Care, CYP Acute Care and CYP Continuing and Community Care forums hosted a lunchtime event at Congress on Wednesday 24 April.

The event was a “pre-launch” of new joint guidance to support nurses when families are given bad news, and was attended by 150-160 members. Reflecting on the event, Chair of the CYP Specialist Care Forum and Senior Teaching Fellow at Queen's University Belfast Doris Corkin said: "Overall, the event was a practical, insightful experience which received overwhelmingly positive comments and feedback."

Read a write-up of the event on the Congress 2013 webpages, here.