Lisa Shepherd, an Endocrinology Advanced Nurse Practitioner at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust and Chair of the Society for Endocrinology Nurse Committee, discusses continuing education opportunities and the value of networking for endocrine nurses.
Endocrinology is a fascinating but complex area and nurses often work in isolation, so opportunities to develop and update their knowledge, benchmark their practice and network with other nurses are invaluable. The Society for Endocrinology Nurse Committee supports a number of strategies that promote networking amongst the Endocrine Nurse community.
Social media is increasingly used to build professional networks, so the Nurse Committee have set up an invite-only group on Facebook for endocrine nurses, which is a fast and easy way for the community to share protocols and information. Nurse Members of the Society also have a Twitter feed where training opportunities, research and nursing practice can be promoted to the wider community.
Face-to-face networking remains an effective means of sharing experience and learning from others, so a ‘nurses lounge’ was recently introduced at the SfE BES conference, to give nurses a dedicated space to meet each other in person. As many nurses are working in isolation it is valuable to provide a variety of opportunities, across different media that encourages endocrine nurses to support and learn from each other.
Endocrine Nurse Update (ENU) is coming up soon. This yearly update is designed by nurses for nurses and offers a varied and active programme of endocrinology topics. I am very excited that this year’s ENU will feature the inaugural Endocrine Nurse Award lecture by winner, Nikki Kieffer. This award was introduced to recognise excellent nursing practice that can be shared to advance knowledge and understanding in the discipline. Nikki is an endocrine nurse specialist at Leicester Royal Infirmary and led the project that developed the Competency Framework for Adult Endocrine Nursing. This project is a great example of nurses working together to share best practice and Nikki will deliver the prize lecture at ENU 2017 in March.
There are also great benefits to networking with other closely related communities and this year, for the first time, ENU will include a workshop run collaboratively between clinician and nurse colleagues, Dr Richard Quinton, Dr Channa Jayasena and Dr Andrew Dwyer. Whether you are a nurse new to endocrinology or a nurse with many years of experience, the ENU programme, in combination with Clinical Update has something to offer all. I hope you can join us at the meeting or follow us online, to learn from your colleagues and share your experience.
Nominations for the 2018 Endocrine Nurse Award are open until 16 June 2017, find out more.
Travel grants are available for ENU 2017, apply before 15 March.
The Endocrine Post 