Nuclear medicine nurses update

Published: 16 November 2012

I made a real effort earlier this year to raise the profile of our nursing group by attempting to write in our newsletter regularly. I’m wondering if I have failed already as work commitments over the last three months have meant I have been rather quieter than I originally intended! So what have I been up to? Well, I think my department has reflected what most of us face every year. We have had inspections by the Health and Safety Executive, the Environment Agency and the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) all in the space of three months. We have also just secured funding for the replacement of two of our cameras and hope to start the building works ahead of the installation of our new SPECT/CT systems in a few short weeks. Exciting times!

But what of our Nuclear Medicine Nurses Group? Well, we remain a small group without doubt but I think it fair to say that we are no less committed. Between us we make good representation at the quarterly British Nuclear Medicine Society (BNMS ) meetings in London and Caroline Rushton remains pivotal as our lead on the RCN Imaging Nurse Forum. These meetings allow us to voice our opinions and influence practice and that is where I would like to ask for your help.

The nurses group has been asked by BNMS to lead on needle safety and write guidelines on best practice for the safe administration of radiopharmaceuticals through IV lines. Radiation protection advice and infection control measures are key to this. The aim is to have these published on the website to act as guidelines for all nurses to access. So please email me with your suggestions to enable me to take this forward on behalf of our group.

We also spoke about a fitting memorial for our founder member Ingrid Crane who sadly died recently and I am delighted that BNMS have agreed we can have our own nurses’ page on the website in her name. I really hope this will be up and running by the end of the year. This would be a good opportunity to share job descriptions and generally discuss our scope of practice.

Finally, but by no means least we are also participating in the Scientific Committee meetings to plan next year’s Spring BNMS meeting. Can I ask all you nuclear medicine nurses to think about submitting an abstract for the meeting to help us to make it a valuable one? Our group will only be as successful as the interest shown by its members.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Carolyn Lory,
Co-chair BNMS Nurses Group
Carolyn.Lory@medway.nhs.uk