ANNUAL REPORT 2005-06

PPDNF Annual Report 2005-2006

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Report from the Chair

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One of the benefits of looking back over a year is being able to reminisce and take stock of the excellent meetings held at various locations through out Scotland and celebrate some of the successes of the organisation. This last year is no exception.

2005 started off with an excellent conference held in Perth on 14 April. It was a great day for learning and networking for the 100 or so delegates. The day was purposefully entitled Carpe Diem…..Seize the Day a concept which all practice developers could engage with. The new CNO for Scotland, Paul Martin, gave a strategic overview of his aspiration for nursing in Scotland and where he saw Practice Development fitting with that vision, whilst his colleague Theresa Fyffe gave an excellent presentation of the context of policy and how that affects practice. We were delighted that Rhona Hotchkiss, departing head of the national PDU had one of her ‘swansongs’ at the conference and true to form, gave a lively, entertaining presentation with a strong message to all present to be committed to both technical and emancipatory practice development processes. Belinda Dewar from the Centre for the Older Person’s Agenda at Queen Margaret University College gave an interesting paper on harnessing learning from action learning. The afternoon sessions on action learning, practice education and putting the heart back into person centred care were well received by all. Overall the event was a great start to the year.

At the AGM event in May 2005, two new committee members were elected. Thanks were expressed to Ann Rae and Irene Lavery, both of who stood down from their respective roles of secretary and vice chair. Fiona Cook retained the role of chair for a further 2 years, Diane Allcock was elected as Vice Chair, and James Cassidy remained as Treasurer. The secretarial role was discussed and consequently it was agreed that this role should be split into two separate roles; one with the responsibility of the website maintenance, and the other to be the membership secretary. Caroline Scott agreed to remain on the committee as the website secretary, and Jane Christie was elected as the membership secretary. This change involved an amendment to the constitution which the membership agreed to.

Both Caroline and Jane, respectively, have worked hard over the year to fine tune the website to suit members' needs and to refine the membership list. Currently we are exploring the data protection principles of the membership database.

The realignment of the various roles of committee members offered a chance to identify and define the responsibilities of the each of the committee. Profiles for the roles were drawn up and are available to view on the website, together with a brief personal resume of the current committee members.

An innovation in the past year has been the instigation of action learning within the group. Two sets with around 7 members each, all members of the PPDNF have been meeting each month with a facilitator. Evaluation of the first year proved that set members valued the opportunity, were learning more about themselves and how they worked and importantly were beginning to harness the evidence of transformational and sustainable change in their personal and professional lives. The sets continue to be facilitated by Kate Cocozza and Fiona Cook and a further recent evaluation again proved the efficacy of meeting together in this way and a further set of meetings have been arranged.

The smallness of Scotland and the devolution of political and professional power continue to be an advantage for the PPDNF. We are pleased that excellent relationships exist between colleagues within the Scottish Executive, NQIS and NHS Education for Scotland and the PPDNF. Indeed colleagues from these organisations also are members of the PPDNF! These positive relationships ensure that healthy dialogue often takes place, on a formal and informal basis, on how the PPDNF can be helpful and influential in practice development in Scotland.

The work of the subgroups continues to be a key element of the PPDNF group as they work together to produce helpful tools for the benefit of the organisation and beyond. The groups currently working together are continuing the work of the Person Centred Audit tool, whilst another is developing an on-line Facilitation toolkit. The conference committee has been hard at work finalising the 2006 conference to be held in Glasgow on the 14 June.

Our links with the UK Developing Practice Network (DPN) are important to maintain. We were delighted when the new national Chair of the DPN, Rob McSherry attended a PPDNF meeting in Stirling last year and presented his dynamic vision of practice development. Subsequently, Fiona Cook represented the PPDNF at the DPN AGM in County Durham in October 2005 and was pleased to be able to share some of the good practices of the PPDNF with DPN colleagues and is ongoing. Caroline Scott and Fiona recently also attended an extraordinary meeting of the DPN and were able to network and share with those present.

The Scottish RCN International Practice Development School held in Glasgow in November 2005 was a great week. Some of the PPDNF members attended as delegates but all of the facilitators on the week also belong to the PPDNF. Quite an achievement!

Fiona Cook was also invited by NES to join the steering group of the Practice Development Literature Review work currently being undertaken by Brendan McCormack and colleagues. We are eagerly anticipating the findings of this work being disseminated for the first time at the conference in June 2006.

The membership of the PPDNF presently remains exclusively nursing. This concept was revisited during this last year and the desire to retain the nursing identity and focus of the group strongly influenced the decision to maintain status quo for the meantime.

In summary, another excellent year of networking and support has taken place with huge commitment being displayed by members, particularly noticeable by the excellent attendance at the quarterly meetings and also the support demonstrated by the responses to the many items placed on the website notice board.

Many thanks to all members of the PPDNF for their enthusiasm, support and commitment; without you there would be no PPDNF!!

Fiona Cook
PPDNF Chair
April 2006

Other Reports

The following reports can be downloaded in PDF format:

Treasurer's report, March 2004-April 2006

Secretaries' report, 2005/06

Web site secretary's report, 2005/06

Chair's report 2005/06 (as above, but in printable format)

This page last updated 15 June 2006

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