RCN Congress – Intro

Today (Saturday 12th May) is International Nurses' Day, and the first day of RCN Congress in Belfast. This year the Mental Health Forum has eleven delegates who are voting members - the Congress agenda has items for discussion and resolutions to vote on. Each of our delegates represents over a thousand members. Over the next …

Moaning about negativity

There have been complaints that posts on the RCN Members Facebook group have become too negative, so I want to share some good vibes, and not in a fluffy hug-a-rainbow way. Just under a year ago, the day after last year's Congress where I was riding on a high after our emergency resolution on pay …

A typical ‘male’ response

Let me say from the beginning, I am a big fan of the RCN. I've had great professional and personal support from the institution and the members in the six years I've been a member. I've gone from insecure student not knowing anything to chairing the largest professional forum in that short time, my skills …

#MHNursesDay 2019 – Why I do what I do

Today is the first ever Mental Health Nurses' Day, so here's a repost of a spoken word performance I did a couple of years ago, about the high and the low of my job. There's obviously clinical skills in there, but these are the feels: I work with mummies and mummies to be, and I …

Debate this

It seems a ridiculously long time away, but it's time to start planning for RCN Congress in May next year. A big part of what the Mental Health Forum can do is submit items for debate and discussion to the Agenda Committee, and the deadline is 2nd January 2018. Which leads me to asking our …

Response to “The future of the mental health workforce”

This blog post first appeared on the RCN website here https://www.rcn.org.uk/news-and-events/blogs/response-to-the-future-of-the-mental-health-workforce-report The Centre for Mental Health was commissioned by the NHS Confederation to explore future mental health workforce needs. The RCN Mental Health Forum welcomes the recognition that mental health nurses have important skills, and that the profession has experienced significant upheaval in recent years. …

Shock news: police are not nurses.

A reflection on the following article:  https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/28/police-phone-calls-mental-health-nhs There is a lot to consider from the perspective of those in contact with services, but there are others more qualified to comment on that with their own lives experience. I can imagine that for some in crisis, being met by uniformed officers might only exacerbate their distress. …

Nurse training in the UK

As if the constant erosion of skills, pay and benefits wasn't enough, we had the removal of the student nurse bursary which the inexplicably-employed Jeremy Hunt assured would result in a great increase in training places and therefore numbers of new nurses. Many, including individual professionals and bodies, warned that recruitment would drop. It turns …