MINUTES - PAST MEETINGS

22 November 2002, Vale of Leven Hospital, Alexandria

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Present
Fiona Cook, Vice-Chair; Aileen Ross; Ann Rae; Kate Lambie; Maria Dale; Elaine Traynor; Yvonne Neilson; Joyce Jaffrey; James Cassidy; Liz Fettes; Irene Lavery; Judy Taylor; Liz Swan

Apologies received from
Anne Crawford; Ansley McGibbon; Susan Alexander; Marie Carey; Brenda Howie; Jane Ormarod;
Caroline Scott; Vicky Stewart; Charlie Sinclair; Elspeth Munro; Madge Balfour; Anne Dolan; David Langton; Joan Kay; Chris Rodden; Margaret McClermont; Kate Cocozza; Dorothy Armstrong;
Vivienne Simpson; Sandra Crawford

1. Welcome and Introductions

Fiona thanked Judy for hosting the meeting and as some new members were present, the group were introduced to each other.

2. Minutes from previous meeting

Minutes of previous meeting held on 22nd August at St. John's Hospital were agreed to be a true and accurate reflection of that meeting.

3. Report from the Chair Group

In the absence of Kate Cocozza (Treasurer) and Chris Rodden (Secretary), Fiona gave the report on their behalf. Fiona apologised that the annual report was not yet out. Following discussion with the executive committee, it was agreed that the finances should be audited prior to a report from the treasurer to be included in the PPDNF annual report. Fiona was able to report that the finance department of the Southern General Hospital are willing to audit the accounts on our behalf. Meantime the bank balance remains healthy.

4. Report from Secretary

One new member has joined the forum since the last meeting by the on-line application form. Chris has submitted articles regarding the PPDNF to the Scottish Nurse and the Nursing Standard. The Scottish Nurse rejected the article because it was felt that we were appearing to be advertising the existence of the forum rather than informing them what the forum is all about; however the Nursing Standard did put the article on-line through their web-site which is encouraging.

5. Report from Vice-Chair

Fiona informed the group that she and Kate Cocozza had travelled to London for the Annual General meeting of the Practice Development Forum in England on 30th October 2002. She reported back some of the key decisions that were made that day which are as follows:

Practice Development Forum is changing its title to "Developing Practice Network". This is going to be predominantly a web-based network acknowledging the difficulty members have in travelling to be together regularly. Currently the English forum is made up of different regions; the regional membership consists of nurses and other allied healthcare professionals who are interested in practice development. However, representatives at the AGM in London were all from a nursing background.
The network is to be co-ordinated nationally by an executive group made up of Brendan McCormack (Chair), Treasurer, Secretary and Sandra Crawford from the Scottish branch.
Each of the regions acts as visionary groups who work together on a particular area of practice and then share this with others.
Decisions were taken to retain membership fees and there was great discussion surrounding regional membership fees.
Each of the regions is encouraged to hold at least one event per year.
They need to build a web page, which would be the arena for communicating with each other, and this will be launched at the conference they are planning to hold in May 2003.

This feed-back stimulated some discussion surrounding how the PPDNF in Scotland could work in harmony with the PDF in England and Fiona made two suggestions:-

Let Fiona assume the role of Chair of the Scottish PPDNF in order to represent the organisation at a national level to replace Sandra Crawford meantime. Sandra Crawford would assume the role of Vice-Chair meantime and Fiona agreed to write to Sandra and let her know of this change.
Fiona reiterated that the PDF in England is a multi-professional organisation and informed those present that approximately three years ago the PPDNF in Scotland had debated a proposal to become a multi-professional organisation and at that time had voted to retain a nursing only identity. Given that NHS Education for Scotland is now established, Fiona suggested that this might be an appropriate time to raise this issue again and that it might be useful to debate this further at our next meeting. The group agreed that this would be a useful exercise. Fiona suggested that we make it a formal debate with speakers for and against. Kate Cocozza has offered to speak in support of the PPDNF in Scotland becoming a multi-professional organisation whilst James Cassidy is willing to defend the right of the PPDNF in Scotland to retain a nursing only identity. Once both arguments have been presented there will be room for debate and discussion and a final vote will take place, which will guide our way forward.

The group also agreed it would be interesting to invite a professional officer from NHS Education Scotland to come to update us at our next meeting, preferably after the debate so that we would not be influenced by their contribution. Fiona agreed to speak to Dorothy Armstrong or Carol Watson and invite them to the next meeting.

6. Working Group Feedback

Practice Development Competencies - Liz apologised for the delay in producing the document but circulated to the group the final version of competencies for practice development staff. The group all greed that this was an excellent piece of work; well worth waiting for! It was debated what should now happen to the document. After some discussion the group agreed that the document should be sent to a group a key people who would be competent to assess the content of the document and also to circulate the document on the PPDNF database for comments as to how they would apply the principles of the competency framework in their practice. Following comments from the key group and the PPDNF members, a final document would be produced and circulated to Directors of Nursing, etc. and put on the web site for all to see. The suggested names of the key group to assess the content of the document are as follows:-

Bernice West
Rhona Hotchkiss
Kim Manley
Tracy Fife
Brenda McCormack
Carol Watson
Roslyn Crocket
John Unsworth

Liz agreed to action these points.

Fiona thanked Liz and the others on this working group for their hard work.

7. Web-site

Since the last meeting, Chris has liased with the web developers and they have resolved some of the issues debated last time, for example - now all text is printed on A4 page and they have increased the hits from the internet search entrance by highlighting key words with our site.
A new contract has been agreed with the web developers where they will work on the web-site for a set period of time every month. It is therefore essential that all members input onto the web-site. Fiona encouraged all members present to e-mail relevant local information about what is currently happening in their area to Chris so that she can post this on the web-site on their behalf. For example, Ann Rae's report on the recent RCN conference will be posted on the web-site for all members to view.

Once the benchmarking and competency tools are finalised, these will also be placed on the web-site. Fiona informed the group that she and Kate had been in discussion with medical illustrations at the Southern General to re-format the competency tool to ensure its appropriateness for the web-site.

The group discussed that, as a potentially large number of documents would be freely available on the web-site whether Chris could explore 2 suggestions:-

A paragraph about copyright of the PPDNF is placed on the home page of the web-site.
Work, like the competency tool - whether amendments can be made on-line so that people can keep electronic copies of competency assessments, etc.

8. Competency Tool

Fiona informed the group that she and Chris had been in discussion with Rhona Hotchkiss at NMPDU regarding every newly qualified registered nurse get a personal copy of the competency assessment tool. Fiona had written to remind Rhona about this recently and Rhona has requested that we give spare copies to her so that she can take this action forward. Any members who have spare copies of the competency assessment tool please forward to Fiona.

9. Risk Management Tool

Joyce reported back on the risk management tool on behalf of the group. Their work has been complicated by a number of key people in the group changing jobs, etc. A small scale evaluation exercise of the existing tool has been undertaken although the comments are mostly of a positive nature, Joyce acknowledged that because of the small number of returned evaluations, it was difficult to generalise findings.

The group discussed the way forward for this tool. New members not aware of its existence until now were quite keen to pilot and evaluate it. Joyce had also commented that the negative comments from the evaluation had been in relation to the scoring system. Although the group is quite keen that the work on this particular area of work is brought to a close, Fiona suggested that prior to writing to all Directors of Nursing and Risk Managers, etc that further work be done by Joyce and the group on the scoring system and secondly that those new members who were willing to pilot the tool in their local areas do so. Fiona asked that this work be completed by the date of the next meeting in February.

10. The Conference

In the absence of Marie Carey, Fiona informed the group that the conference would be held on Friday, 13th June 2003 in the Southern General Hospital. She was able to assure the group that all of the existing speakers have put this date in their diaries. The title of the conference remains the same, i.e. "Pushing Back Boundaries". The content of the morning remains very similar, the afternoon workshops require some work and planning prior to the definitive document being circulated by the conference working group.

Fiona informed the group that the PDF in England's conference is being held in May 2003.
Ann Rae informed the group that she has been invited to join the steering committee of the first NHS Education in Scotland conference to be held in Nairn in March 2003. She encouraged everybody to submit abstracts. Fiona agreed to submit the PPDNF poster for the conference. Ann also requested that a member of the executive committee of the PPDNF in Scotland join the NES steering committee. Fiona agreed to speak to Dorothy Armstrong at NES about this.

11. Effectiveness of Forum

Ann Rae reported back on the work which she, Caroline and Aileen had been conducting. They have devised a very comprehensive questionnaire, which they have piloted on a small number of people within the PPDNF. Anne agreed to circulate this questionnaire to the whole of the membership on the database and requested that they be completed and returned by the 13th December 2002. This will allow the group time to analyse the results and feedback at the next meeting in 2003. Fiona thanked Ann and the group for their hard work and looks forward to the results.

12. Bench-Marking Tool

All agreed that this tool had never really gone very far. Some of the members had used it a number of years ago to benchmark against their own areas of practice but it has not been widely available. Once again the group discussed a way forward for this tool and it was suggested that Fiona, Kate and Chris send a letter, together with the bench-marking tool to the Directors of Nursing in Scotland to inform them of this piece of work. It may be appropriate to show this document to NHS Education people as well.

13. Feedback

The RCN Summer School - Judy Taylor and Maria Dale had both been participants at the RCN Summer School at Stirling University. Fiona and Kate had been facilitators on the same course. The title of the week's residential course was "Fostering a Culture of Effectiveness Through Practice Development". Judy reported her very positive experience of being a participant on the course, which Maria endorsed. Ann Rae also reported back from the enhancing practice conference held by the RCN in Keel. The PPDNF had paid for Ann to attend this conference and she presented the PPDNF poster, which had been accepted by the conference organisers on our behalf. Ann's excellent report is attached.

14. Presentation by Nancy Kirkland, Nursing & Midwifery Council

Nancy Kirkland, a colleague of Fiona and Kate Lambie, gave an interesting presentation on the work with the Nursing & Midwifery Council, which provoked lively debate and discussion.

15. Open Forum

Aileen informed the group that a colleague of her's, John Carmichael, has been doing a lot of work on Nursing Auxiliary competencies and would like to share this work. He intends to become a member of the PPDNF but this might be an area of work, which we examine in more detail in the future.

Ann Rae suggested that the PPDNF in Scotland could perhaps introduce Action Learning as a key component of the meeting. Fiona indicated that this meeting might be too large but agreed that this is something which we should maybe put on the agenda to be discussed further at a future meeting.

Elaine Traynor informed the group that she has been involved in training nurses to administer Apomorphine via a syringe driver and wondered whether others have had similar experiences. Anybody who has any experience working in this area should contact Elaine directly.
Irene Lavery asked the group to consider identifying core elements of expanded role training to minimise the "re-trainings" which occurs from Trust to Trust. Fiona agreed that this could be discussed at a future meeting.

Fiona informed the group that Lothian Primary Care Trust and Lothian University Hospital Trust independently of each other has had a CPD framework accredited with Queen Margaret University College. This in effect means that staff can gain academic credit for studying at work towards a degree outcome from Queen Margaret University College.

16. Future Meeting

The date of the next meeting is 18th February, 2003 in Edinburgh. Irene Lavery agreed to explore the possibility of the group meeting in the new Royal Infirmary site. Failing that, Fiona agreed to find a site within Lothian Primary Care. More details with the agenda about that meeting.

Fiona thanked everyone for coming and wished them a Happy Christmas, a good New Year and a safe journey home

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This page last updated 13 June 2003

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