Letter from the Chair

Published: 19 September 2011

Vicky Chamberlain discusses the 2012 conference as well as members’ latest contributions.

I hope you have all had a nice summer even though the weather has, yet again, conspired against us!

Your committee continues to work hard representing you and your patients and we are working on a number of projects at the moment:

Conference – come along!

We are busy planning our 2012 forum conference and I hope this will prove informative and interesting not only to experienced rheumatology nurses but also to those who are new to the speciality. We also want to welcome those of you  who work more generically, including those of you who work on the wards, in outpatient departments, in a community setting and in the private sector. The focus this year is on the wider rheumatological picture, and includes information on gout and polymyalgia rheumatica, as well as the important role of nursing staff in the current climate.

We hope as many of you as possible will be able to join us in Bristol on 9 and 10 February 2012 – look out for the application forms. And please don’t forget – we offer two bursaries to attend our conference. Information on how to apply for these is available here. We will also be calling for abstracts for posters. If you have never done one before, this is a good opportunity to display your first poster. We can offer support and advice as required, so contact us via the RCN at rheumatology@rcn.org.uk.

Members’ work

Forum member Jo White is representing rheumatology nurses on the RCN task and finish group, which is looking at guidelines for e-Health and will include a review of the telephone advice line guidance. There will be more on this in future newsletters.

The forum also had stands at both the British Society for Rheumatology (BSR) and The European League Against Rheumatism this year and it was great to have the opportunity to chat to those of you who could attend. In 2012, BSR will be in Glasgow – the society is looking to you to tell IT about your team and what you are achieving so this work can be displayed on our stand, along with a photo of your team. There will be more information on how to go about this later in the year or early next year.

In November we will be having our strategy meeting to plan for the next 12–18 months and I will let you know the outcome of this in the next newsletter. We plan to look at working on competencies and would welcome any other ideas you have for future work for the forum.

And farewell....

Sadly, Penny Storrs has had to step down from the forum steering group and I would like to thank her both personally and on behalf of you all for her hard work. Penny organised our conference in Manchester and without her it would not have been the success it was. Thank you, Penny – our best wishes in your new job. I hope you enjoy the latest newsletter. Please let us have your feedback and we welcome any articles, notices etc that you would like included.

Best wishes.