Making history

In 2020 the RCN President, Professor Anne Marie Rafferty initiated a contemporary collecting project, to ensure the milestones of the RCN’s Staffing for Safe and Effective Care Campaign (SSEC) are brought together in the RCN Archive. Part of this involves capturing member voices.

Each RCN country and region now has a member who is part of the History of Nursing Forum SSEC project. Training took place in 2020, but sadly COVID interfered with our plans to interview members.

Now in 2021 we are coming together to practice our skills and be ready to go out and capture member experiences of our campaign for safe and effective staffing – why our fellow members are committed to the campaign and what challenges we face along the way. 

We encourage all RCN members to contribute your stories from across the UK, from Scotland and from Northern Ireland Information from these tools will help us shape questions when we come to carry out face to face interviews.

The RCN Archive continues to build the SSEC collection, highlights include interviews of the Northern Ireland 2019 strike, a short film summarising the Welsh campaign experience and the SSEC debates at our annual RCN Congress. The archive team continue to provide advice and training to support this project. 

Panos Poimenidis History of Nursing Forum Committee SSEC Archive Project Lead.