Congress 2013 - Forum Newsletter Editor Daniel Marsden reports

Published: 29 April 2013

This year I had the privilege of attending Congress as a member of the Learning Disability Nursing Forum Steering Committee. Congress is always a big, bustling event, with debates about significant and contemporary nursing topics, often along with keynotes from politicians from the main parties. Politicians were not invited this year; and against a background of the Francis report, Winterbourne View and the regular media coverage of nursing, there was some reflection and much disquiet and debate about where we move from here as a profession.

The keynotes directly referred to these challenges. Austin Thomas, Director of Nursing for the Paralympic Association, talked about his experiences of NHS care, and we also heard from Lord Willis, whose independent review of nurse education has been so influential.

Other events provided new learning on public health: Viv Bennett, the Department of Health’s Director of Nursing and the Government’s Principal Adviser on Public Health Nursing issued the challenge to “make every contact count”; and Dr Steve Boorman, a specialist in occupational medicine who delivered this year’s John Goodlad memorial lecture, advised how caring for the health care workforce has benefits for patients.

Of great enjoyment to me was the #congresstweetup where a group of prolific tweeting nurses finally met for the first time (see www.wenurses.co.uk/blog/rcncongress2013.php).

As a voting member for the Learning Disability Nursing Forum I was involved in several debates, motions and agenda items, on a range of subjects that all had some relevance to and impact on vulnerable people, whether it be restraint training accreditation, end of life care or nutritional support for people. Films of these debates can be found at  www.rcn.org.uk/newsevents/congress/2013

What was also very exciting was hearing from the excellent learning disability nurses who commented on these debates and tabled urgent agenda items. I would particularly like to mention Christina Sosseh, who advocates passionately for   the NHS and her client group. 

There are many ways to get involved as an RCN member. You can go to www.rcn.org.uk/myrcn to register and join a forum. You can get involved with your local branch, and you could make plans to come to Congress 2014!

However, if you do nothing else though, please take four minutes to watch a second year University of Greenwich Student Molly Case perform her poem at Congress. At the time of writing, five days after her performance, Molly had racked up over 168,000 views. Watch Molly’s performance and standing ovation on YouTube.