Meeting of Council s1

COUNCIL NURSING DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE MINUTES

OPEN BUSINESS

Minutes of a meeting of the RCN Council Nursing Development Committee held on 24 February 2007 at RCN Headquarters, Cavendish Square, London, W1G 0RN. The meeting commenced at 09.00 and ended at 12.00.

Members Present Jenny Booth Chair, South East Bobbie Chadwick Deputy President Yorkshire and Humber Stacey Hunter Yorkshire and Humber Gary Jones Convener of Fellows Ben Mott Student Les Storey FRCN North West Marcia Turnham Eastern Paul Watts South West

Eirlys Warrington Chair of Council (part of the meeting) Gary Doherty Northern Ireland Nurse of the Year (for item 07/04)

Apologies for Absence Diane Rawstorne Chair West Midlands

Accountable Officer Alison Kitson FRCN Executive Director of Nursing

Lead Officers Geraldine Cunningham Head, RCN Institute Jill Jarvis Head of Professional Nursing Mary Hinds Director, Northern Ireland

RCN Staff Present in Support of the Meeting Debbie Dzik-Jurasz Lead Facilitator for England for the RCN Clinical Leadership Team (for item 07/05) Dr Carolyn Mason Head of Professional Development – N.Ireland (for item 07/04) Lindsey Hayes Adviser, PND

Administrator Joanne Davies Committee Administrator

07/01 Introductory Remarks and Apologies for Absence 1 1. Jenny Booth, Vice Chair explained that she would be taking the Chair for the meeting as Diane Rawstorne was unwell and unable to be present. She went on to welcome everybody to the meeting, in particular Ben Mott and Paul Watts who were attending their first meeting of NDC and Gary Doherty, Northern Ireland Nurse of the Year and Dr Carolyn Mason, Head of Professional Development in Northern Ireland who would be introducing the item on alcohol issues.

07/02 Minutes of the Open Meeting of NDC

2. The minutes of the open meeting held on 11 November 2006 were approved as a correct record subject to adding Paul Watts to the list of apologies.

Action: Committee Administrator to amend

07/03 Matters Arising from the Open Business of the Previous Meeting

3. Alison Kitson, Executive Director of Nursing congratulated Geraldine Cunningham on her appointment as Head of the RCN Institute.

07/04 Alcohol Issues

4. Gary Doherty and Dr Carolyn Mason gave a thought provoking presentation on improving services for people with alcohol problems and the impact of that work on hospital performance targets.

5. The Committee agreed that the project provided a real opportunity to profile an increasing problem and to provide practice based evidence of how nurses make a real difference to hospital targets.

6. The Committee asked for a project plan to be developed based on implementing a patient care pathway and bench marking it against NHS Business Plan targets.

7. The Committee agreed that it would be important to do a scoping exercise which included scoping existing arrangements and for the pilot project to be included in Trust business plans by getting the buy-in of the Chief Executive at the beginning

8. The Committee suggested working with key partner agencies such as Alcohol Anonymous and linking up with Higher Education Institutions to establish how training was currently being provided for students.

9. It also asked that thought be given to how best to feed-in the patient’s view and experiences to the project.

2 10. Deputy President, Bobbie Chadwick agreed to champion the project and the Committee suggested Rod Thomson, RCN Fellow, would also be a good person to involve in the project.

11. The Committee supported the project to demonstrate the impact an Alcohol Liaison Service can have on hospital performance targets. It noted that a scoping exercise would be carried out and a business plan prepared and that the funding was included in the operational plan.

Actions: A scoping exercise to be carried out and business plan prepared. Rod Thomson, RCN Fellow, to be asked to support project

07/05 Progress on Nutrition Campaign

12. Debbie Dzik – Jurasz updated the Committee on the enormous amount of work that had been achieved since its November meeting on the Food and Nutrition Campaign to be launched at Congress. The Committee commended the work and pledged its full support for the campaign. It agreed that nutrition was an integral and fundamental part to the nursing role and should feature very highly on the nursing agenda.

13. The Committee watched an example of a digital patient story that would feature on the public section of the website.

14. The business plan and the key principles were agreed and Marcia Turnham agreed to champion this work

15. It was confirmed that care homes and speech and language therapists would be included in the campaign. The particular difficulties of mental health care were recognised and it was agreed that it would be helpful to involve the Mental Health Forums in this work.

16. The Committee agreed that clear and easy to access information was essential and a key result of the campaign would be to produce a small, clear document that set out the main principles and signposts for nutrition. An example of a document on Diabetes was circulated for the Committee’s information.

17. The Committee looked forward to receiving further updates.

Action: The Committee to receive further updates as appropriate

07/06 Learning Representatives/Future Activists – The Role of the Nursing Development Committee

17. Alison Kitson, Executive Director, Nursing led a discussion about the role of the Nursing Development Committee in relation to the role of learning representatives and what input the Committee should be having into the Future Activists project. The Committee agreed that by working closely

3 with Learning Representatives there was a real opportunity to influence and shape clinical care.

19. It asked for a report to be prepared its July meeting under the following headings:

- Communication - Impact - Infrastructure - Skills/Role - Positioning within a Trust

which would set out the role of the learning representative in delivering important clinical changes and how the Future Activists project could help develop Learning Representatives for this role.

Action: Report to be prepared for the July meeting of the Committee.

07/07 Congress Resolutions 2006 Update

20. The Committee received the update reports on Congress items. The Chair took the Committee through each report asking the relevant Council lead to highlight any issues.

21. Alan Mawbey joined the meeting to discuss and to answer any questions on his report ‘Safe self harm – is it possible’.

22. The Committee commended the work of the staff who had been involved in the reports and agreed that process had worked well and been extremely effective.

23. Mary Hinds highlighted the implications of the Northern Ireland Review of Public Administration and that it could be raised in any discussion on Congress item 27, Involving Service Users.

Action: To note the following:

The Independent sector’s contribution – Item 16 That the typing error in the last paragraph be amended

Involving Service Users To note that the Northern Ireland Review of Public Administration could be raised under this item.

That the involvement of Fellows in Congress Item follow-up to be built into the process.

07/08 ICN Conference Abstracts

4 24. The Committee received copies of the two abstracts submitted to the ICN Conference.

25. The Committee agreed that, in accordance with the Council decision the previous day relating to ICN funding, papers could not be co- presented. It was agreed that those concerned needed to be informed as soon as possible.

Action: Those concerned to be informed that the ICN abstracts could not be co-presented.

07/09 Work Programme

26. Following on from the previous meeting’s discussions around the Nursing Directorate’s operational plan, Jill Jarvis circulated the draft work programme.

27. The Committee agreed that Modernising Nursing Careers (MNC) would be included as a substantive item on future agendas. Jill explained that Jane Naish, RCN Policy Adviser, was the staff lead and that she was working on a brief setting out possible hotspots including pre-registration education preparation and preparation for community nursing. It was noted that the brief would be available before Congress.

28. The Committee agreed that work on the White Paper on the professional regulation of all health professions should be lead by the Nursing Development Committee and the Chair undertook to discuss this with the Chair of Public Policy Committee. The Committee noted that this work was also being led by Jane Naish who was producing a summary of the proposals that affect nursing regulation, including the following issues of particular concern to the RCN:

 the use of the Knowledge and Skills framework in the revalidation of professional registration  the degree of employer involvement in professional regulation  the use of a sliding scale of a civil standard of proof in fitness-to- practice hearings conducted by the regulatory body; and  the appointment of independent panellists to adjudication panels that hear fitness-to-practice cases for the regulatory body.

29. It was noted that Jill was currently looking at different ways to achieve a staff lead on MRSA and infection control.

30. The Committee agreed to let Jill have any comments on the NMC revised Code of Conduct she circulated by Tuesday March.

Actions: That modernizing nurse careers be included as a substantive item on future NDC agenda That Jane Naish circulate the brief on MDC before Congress

5 That the Committee feedback to Jill Jarvis on the Code of Conduct be 27 February

07/10 Fellows Report

31. Gary Jones circulated a note setting out the issues that had been considered at a Fellows day on 5 December 2006. Gary highlighted the Fellows fringe event at Congress and invited Members of the Committee to attend.

32. Dame Margaret Green’s award from Pope Benedict for her outstanding work within the community was welcomed and it was noted that the award would be presented on 12 April at the South West Regional Board Meeting.

07/11 Report of UK Learning Representatives Committee

33. The report of UK Learning Representatives Committee was noted.

07/12 Date of Next Meeting

Wednesday 16 May 2007

Members asked that a note was circulated confirming the dates and time of future Council and Committee meetings.

End of meeting