Viewpoints
Nice to meet you — the power of networking
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he most significant change to nurses’ regulation in a generation was confirmed at the end of October — England, Scotland and Wales are ready for the implementation of NMC revalidation for nurses and midwives from April, 2016.
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These events gave me the opportunity to listen to expert speakers and discuss the drive to attract nurses into the community. I also met nurses who were looking to move into primary care — two junior nurses working on an acute ward and a prison nurse. Each was unsure how to make the move due to most jobs being advertised with that age-old caveat: ‘experience within the role is essential’. But how can ambitious nurses expect to make a move without having the chance to gain the right experience in the first place?
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As part of the revalidation process, continual professional development (CPD) and the idea of ‘bettering ourselves’ are high on the agenda and while these are fine ideals, how are we to achieve them in our busy professional lives? I find a great way is through attending good quality conferences — those which run workshops, discussion groups and have expert guest speakers from both clinical and industry backgrounds. Just attending a conference itself is evidence towards participatory learning and can be used in your CPD portfolio. They are also an inexpensive way of meeting the
Delegates mixing at a recent JCN Roadshow. 10
JCN 2015, Vol 29, No 6
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In the past month alone, I have had the pleasure of attending four of the most prominent conferences in the primary care sector — a recent JCN Roadshow; the annual Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) conference, the Royal College of General Practitioners’ conference and Best Practice, the National Association of Primary Care show.
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Alex Munro is a registered nurse with a background in unscheduled care as a nurse practitioner. He is the co-founder and clinical director of Hallam Medical, the primary care recruitment specialist
This is just one example, but it illustrates why I love attending conferences and experiencing first-hand the difference they can make. But with so many different conferences out there, how can we decide which are the best ones to attend? And more importantly, which events will benefit our career and add to our knowledge as well as helping to boost our CPD hours?
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experts, finding out the latest industry innovations and mixing with fellow clinicians. And, for anyone looking for a new role, different employers are often in attendance.
Simply being in front of expert speakers and soaking up all the information available at conferences meant that I was able to help these nurses — I told them about the funding that is available specifically to help people like them gain experience in preparation for a move to another role. I was also pleased to be able to introduce them to experts and speakers (who were also grateful) and some positive ideas were discussed on how best to get these nurses into primary care — a fabulous outcome and a great advert for networking.
Research, research, research...
Before trying to choose an event, there are some important questions to consider. Is it in your area of interest or an area you’re looking to move into? What is the feedback from previous years — have people recommended the conference or have any colleagues attended in the past? Who are the guest speakers and what training sessions are available? In order for an event to be beneficial, it must educate us about what is happening in our industry and give us the opportunity to share our knowledge and best practice. We’ll all experience a bad conference at some point, but there are good ones out there and a large proportion of them are free to attend. I’d urge you to go along if you can — you never know who you might bump into and what a difference it could make to your career. JCN
Got an opinion? Let us know about the best conferences you’ve attended recently, so that we can share your experiences and make them a must-attend date on the calendar…write to
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