Shelagh Mason, a member of the SPNA committee, attended Congress as a voting member for the Practice Nurse Forum from Tuesday 11th - Thursday 14th May 2004.   The experience was very interesting with voting on a variety of subjects:

1.  Standardising pre registration training
2.  Protected time for CPD
3.  Provision of palliative care regardless of diagnosis
4.  The NMC increase in fees is untenable
5.  Banning smoking in public places UK wide
6.  Better deal for mental health patients environment
7.  Patients with learning difficulties

These are a few of the 28 items that required votes.   Scotland (Glasgow) submitted at least 3 resolutions.   A number of the items had either direct or indirect implications or impact on practice nursing and there was some valuable input from the practice nurses.   Practice nursing had the largest number of votes for its forum (6) so we have scope to influence decisions especially if nurses become more involved in providing support and information to the committees.

Shelagh Mason