Professional Nursing Committee report from your South West member

We recently met in London for a full day of deliberation followed by a second day with the RCN Trade Union Committee (TUC). 

At our PNC meeting we discussed the continued and worrying decline in student nurse numbers and the attrition rates from courses. Learning disability nursing in particular faces a huge challenge.
There will be an opportunity for members to contribute at RCN Congress in June in Newport on this very important topic. 

Safer staffing, one of our key campaigns, is always on our agenda, and we discussed development following our two safe staffing summits which took place in December and March.

Both were well attended and involved at lot of interesting discussion around the pros and cons of ratios. The information from the summits is now available on the RCN website.

I highly recommend watching the speakers' videos on this page which set out the reality of the challenge, the supporting research, and the concept of nursing as a safety-critical profession. 

The calibre of the speakers is second to none and each talk is extremely informative, interesting and inspirational. 

I can assure you that it’s well worth the time to watch them. Professor Linda Aiken, Professor Jane Ball, Professor James Buchan, Howard Catton and Linda Silas possess an extraordinary wealth of expertise and experience and each presents in an engaging and interesting manner. 

In other news the work on the RCN forums governance structure continues and we will be able to update further on this soon. 

We received updates from the Forums Governance Group and the Forum Chairs Committee that revealed the huge amount of work undertaken by the RCN forums. 

Further information is available here.

Work continues about substitution and clarity around the role of the registered nurse associate (RNA); the RCN values the role of the RNA, however there are concerns that RNAs are at risk of exploitation due to recruitment pressures, and this is unacceptable.

We are reviewing our position statements to support this issue and we are working to ensure the professional boundaries are clear and monitored by the regulators.  

We also heard from the RCN Foundation which provides grants for hardship, education and research. 

These funding streams are not only for RCN members. Please see the Foundation's webpages for more details. 

At our joint meeting with RCN Trade Union Committee colleagues, we considered the government's consultation about a separate pay spine for nurses. This discussion was a consequence of your industrial action last year and the government recently closed its online consultation. 

Recently Professor Pat Cullen, RCN Chief Executive and General Secretary published our response which takes account of the views of more seven thousand members who responded to our consultation on the issue. 

We also heard about the RCN Equality and Diversity strategy and their recently closed membership survey. 

We have appointed consultancy Half the Sky, experts in workplace diversity and inclusion, to support the strategy’s continued development. 

If you would like me to attend any of your RCN branch meetings as the South West representative on the Professional Nursing Committee to discuss in more detail please do get in touch by emailing me at southwestern.region@rcn.org.uk.