Membership to the SPNA is now FREE OF CHARGE

 

 

Membership is free and all Practice Nurses working in Scotland are encouraged to join the Association.   It is still necessary to register to provide us with your contact details.

 

This year has been another challenging one for most of us.  Pay freezes, increased pension contributions and working for longer will affect a great many practice nurses now and in the future.  The RCN estimates that two thirds of nurses will face an increase in pension contributions and this coupled with rises in the cost of living and pay freezes makes for a gloomy outlook. The NHS nursing and midwifery workforce in Scotland fell by 486 whole time equivalent posts between 31 March and 30 June this year.  Most of these losses have been in secondary care but the effects are being felt in primary care with earlier discharges and shifting of more work into primary care.

 

On a more positive note Scotland is moving ahead with the appointment of Susan Kennedy at NES as National Co-ordinator for General Practice Nursing.  Susan has already done a tremendous amount of work since her appointment this year.  The most exciting thing for me is the work she has done developing a national education programme to become a General Practice Nurse.  She will be at our annual conference in May presenting an update of her first year in post.

 

The committee as always has been working hard on behalf of members.  Most if not all of the time they use is their own and without them the SPNA could not function. 

 

The changes in RCN cover for practice nurses with the loss of vicarious liability for members has created some confusion and the SPNA has met with a representative of the RCN and expressed members concerns.  There are some outstanding questions we are seeking clarification of from defence unions and will email members once we have the answers to these.

 

Next year our annual conference will be moving to Glasgow for the first time.  There were a variety of factors which lead to this and I hope we will see a strong turnout for it.  Details of this will be sent out early next year so please watch for them and put the date in your diary.

 

Rhona Aikman, SPNA Chair

 

SPNA Conference 2012

Confirmed date and venue:

Wednesday 16th May 2012

IET Teacher Building, St Enoch Square, Glasgow