Get together

Chair of the RCN Greater Liverpool and Knowsley branch Carmel shares what Congress means to her and how the idea came about

I joined the RCN as a student nurse because I wanted trade union backup and loved the idea of the library access. Although I was active within my university community as a student mentor and quality ambassador, I didn’t really engage with the RCN. I don’t think I knew what it had to offer. I went along to RCN Congress and was a bit overwhelmed.

When I graduated, I felt lost. I’d been so involved at university but when I got my pin number, I felt like I’d been flung into a wide-open world and I’d lost my security blanket. My ward colleagues were amazing, and I knew they would teach me to be a good nurse, but I needed to be part of a bigger picture. I’d seen an advert for Congress and thought I would pop along and give it another go. My sister Helen, who’s also a nurse, was home from London and so we went together.

That Congress week was awesome. I listened to the debates, saw Helen as a voting member, met lots of interesting people, went to some fringe events and learnt all sorts of useful stuff. But, more importantly, I felt like part of something. I had caught the Congress bug. That week saw me sign up to be a steward and begin my involvement with the RCN. Later I became branch secretary of the RCN Greater Liverpool and Knowsley (GLK) branch, then chair and regional board member.  

Fast forward to this year, 2020 – International Year of the Nurse and Midwife – a year to celebrate our community and all the fantastic work we do. Agenda items had been furiously crafted for Congress and our branch and board had made all necessary arrangements to have an excellent event this year.

And then a global pandemic hit; a virus stretching our own nursing community to its limits. If ever there was a time that we needed to come together it was now, but just as I had once found Congress contagious, now it really would have been.

The RCN GLK branch is very active; full of enthusiastic people wanting to share their experiences. Our branch meetings are always lively. By May 2020, we’d already missed a meeting and needed a catch up, our WhatsApp group was pinging away. We had a branch meeting over Skype, facilitated by regional comms and everyone expressed how upset they were to be missing Congress.

The GLK branch is very active; full of enthusiastic people wanting to share their experiences

We talked about how life was different but how we were using new technologies to keep in touch. Keeping positive had been a priority for us and we had been posting messages of support for members on social media since the beginning of lockdown.  

Last year at Congress we had an agenda item about engagement, and we spoke about the importance of being in touch with our community and finding the best ways to hear members’ voices. It’s something members of the GLK branch feel very strongly about and we’ve actively sought to increase engagement with members since.

We were worried that we would lose touch with each other, members and all those people that we normally connect with at Congress. So, we decided to hold our own virtual Congress. My sister Helen, now the branch communications officer, had some great ideas and with her unrivalled passion and determination she set about making #glkvirtualcongress happen.

Once the decision was made that our branch would hold a "virtual Congress", I set about planning it. We discussed ideas during our virtual branch meeting. As Congress was meant to be taking place in Liverpool this year, our branch had already talked about putting on competitions and events throughout the week to promote engagement and have a bit of fun.

I wanted to build on some of those ideas that we’d been planning before Congress was cancelled. I also suggested posting pictures and stories of past Congresses on social media, and I wanted to set up virtual fringe events and some coffee mornings to bring members together. 

I suggested a student’s day, and from this we had the idea to contact one of our student ambassadors. We also thought about other people we could contact to hold talks during the week and we ended up with an agenda full of interesting people. During our branch meeting, a discussion on pay overran so, because it was such a big topic, I suggested that we hold another pay discussion as part of our virtual congress week too and give members a chance to share their thoughts.

Getting organised

After our branch meeting, I sent an email to our regional team to let them know what we were planning and to ask if they thought we could do it. They got back to me straight away and were very positive about it. Their only concern was that it was quite close to Congress week so may be difficult to get all the information out on time. They didn’t say no though. They were absolutely up for the challenge and together we worked extremely hard over the next couple of days to get it all set up.

A major challenge was how we were going to host everything. With some support from our regional office, we set up a "team" in Microsoft Teams and sent the link to members in the north west region so they could join it. I created different channels so we could easily share pictures and stories from past Congresses, run coffee mornings and host Q&A sessions with our guests.

It was great to have a platform where members could chat and post. We held a couple of virtual coffee mornings throughout the week, so we were able to connect with some familiar faces and meet new people.

We also hosted some afternoon meet ups on Zoom so we could reach a wider audience and include members who weren’t using teams, and we hosted an open mic night and quiz too. Zoom proved to be an invaluable tool as we were able to reach so many more people and we were in touch with members across the length and breadth of the four countries. It was truly wonderful to meet them all. We also recorded a lot of the sessions so we’re able to re-watch them or share them at a later date.

During the run up to the week and the week itself, we were posting lots on our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram page to promote the different events. We tried to think of creative ways to engage members. I decided to teach myself some stop-motion animation to recreate some iconic moments from Congress with Lego and these went down very well.

Carmel also recreated Congress scenes with teddies; giving talks to a teddy audience, bandaging lots of broken teddy legs and supervising an awfully long queue for the toilets. We thought it would bring a smile to people’s faces and hoped it would get people chatting and posting their own memories with the hashtag #glkvirtualcongress.

A packed agenda

As the week went on, our sessions grew and grew. We held a number of sessions with different active members from across the RCN and staff. Mike Travis, who sits on the RCN Trade Union Committee, joined us to talk about Agenda for Change, rebanding and pay. Sessions like these, using the experience of our members and their knowledge to break down huge topics, can be an incredible resource. 

We also caught up with our regional director Estephanie Dunn and our branch president and previous RCN President Andrea Spyropoulos. RCN national officer Kim Sunley joined us to talk about hand health – always an important topic but even more so at the moment – and student ambassador Sam Turner talked about the student experience. 

We also had many familiar faces from Congress – Sam Spence discussed her experience of being on the Congress Agenda Committee and RCN Council member Dave Dawes chatted about the role of Congress in the RCN and shared some of his Congress memories. Chair of RCN Congress BJ Waltho also joined us for a wonderful chat about what Congress means to her and members. We laughed and cried, and it demonstrated just how much Congress means for all of us. RCN President Anne Marie Rafferty joined us for a session too and talked about the College, Congress and what’s next for the RCN.

What’s next?

We’ve made our pay discussion available online for members to watch and we hope to hold more virtual discussions on pay in the future. We would love to connect with branches across the UK. My next task is to set up a virtual meeting so that we can all get together to share how we are reaching our members during this time, share ideas and help support each other.

Setting up our virtual Congress was an enormous task. Some things worked, others were not as successful, but we achieved so much. We were able to connect people during a week that is all about meeting people, networking, learning and having fun.

We were able to connect people during a week that is all about meeting people, networking, learning and having fun

Congress is such an important week in the year. What came from all of our chats is that there is so much to gain from Congress, personally and collectively as a College. It’s exciting that there will be an official, UK-wide virtual event with debates later in the year. I will definitely be tuning in for that.

I think this is a very exciting time for the RCN, we have shown that with some hard work and determination, we can achieve a lot in a short amount of time. We also have a great team in our region, who helped make this all possible and as a branch, we are extremely grateful.