Hi y’all. I just got back from spending yesterday at the Royal College of Nursing congress. Here’s a few of my observations.
1. The thing that got the big news attention. Yesterday afternoon the RCN voted to consider industrial action. I wasn’t in the auditorium at the time of the vote (not that it would have mattered, because I wasn’t there as a voting member.) The first I heard of it was when a friend of mine rang my mobile to excitedly tell me what had happened. Apparently the original motion had been much weaker and didn’t mention industrial action, but somebody proposed an emergency motion calling for such action to be considered, and it passed overwhelmingly. First the Great Patricia Hewitt Roast at last year’s congress, now this. The RCN definitely seems to be moving away from its “pussywhipped” reputation.
2. A motion that I was in the auditorium to see called for an increase in administrative support for nurses, so that nurses can spend less time with the paperwork, and more time with patients. As one of the speakers pointed out, there’s something wrong with a health service where nurses spend 40% of their time filling in forms and typing up reports. That’s the equivalent of 2 days of the working week just doing the paperwork. The increased use of computers is also causing problems, because so many nurses are computer illiterate. Personally computers aren’t a problem for me, because I’m very computer literate and have a fast typing speed, but we all know nurses who sit at the keyboard laboriously pecking away with two fingers. If there was a typist handy then the typing could be done in a fraction of the time, and that nurse could be out on the ward floor doing what he/she does best.
3. Away from the auditorium in the exhibition area, various stalls where piling people up with leaflets, pens, packets of post-it notes and other assorted freebies. The quality of Free Crap from the stalls wasn’t nearly as good as last year, when I got a polaroid camera, a manicure set and a travel mug, but I did get some inflatable egg cups and a teddy bear. And I won’t need to buy a pen or post-it notes for some time.
4. The Tea4Health campaign were giving away free booklets on how to divine the future from tea leaves. Evidence-based practice in action, eh?
5. Also in the “hurrah for evidence-based practice” stakes, the National Federation of Spiritual Healers and an acupuncture organisation also had stalls. I didn’t see any homeopathy stalls. Maybe they had a microscopic-sized one that got trampled into the carpet by the attendees?
6. Two stalls were promoting “probiotic” products – you know, those drinks and yoghurts that are supposed to increase the amount of friendly bacteria in your stomach. I’ve always been slightly confused by these things. After all, surely we’ve survived millions of years successfully without Yakult? I decided to ask a lady on the stall about it.
Me: “So what exactly are the health benefits of taking probiotic products?”
Lady: “Probiotic products increase the amount of useful bacteria in your stomach and keeps it topped up.”
Me: “Okay. What are the consequences of these bacteria levels being too low?”
Lady: “Well…you’d have a shortage of this bacteria.”
I’m still none the wiser at to why I’ll die if I don’t drink Danone Activia. Does anyone know the answer to this?
7. This done, we all headed off to the annual Students Ball: an event once described by an RCN official as a “hepatic rhapsody”. So off we went to conduct intensive research into the effects of binge-drinking. Oof, my head.
You die if you do not drink probiotics ?
The RCN to *think* about industrial action. How very daring.
I was being sarcastic about dying if I don’t drink probiotics. :p
Apparently Muller Vitality yogurt is not only probiotic but also prebiotic. Which is fantastic. Erm…I guess.
Okay, it wasn’t exactly “Let’s all grab a red flag and storm the Houses of Parliament”, but it was a shot across the bows nonetheless. It made the front page of the Guardian this morning. Which OSB will know, because it’s his favourite newspaper. Apart from the Socialist Worker, naturally.
Well it is too late to tell me now Z ! I have just purchased several pints of ‘life saving’ probiotics
I see. The pot isn`t big enough to provide NHS staff with an adequate pay rise and the RCN`s solution is to diminish the pot further by employing more admin staff. Genius. I was briefly tempted to follow Malcolm`s example ( a highly unusual step ) and join Amicus. Then I remembered they will be affiliated to NuLabour. No thanks, I`ll remain a bewildered member of the RCN.
Less paperwork anyone ???.
Zed, I was going to make a smug comment about the Morning Star as I understood it had folded. I was hugely disturbed to discover it`s still coming off the press. Who reads that drivel ?.
I don`t care about the evidence base or what leaves intimate for our futures. Tea IS healthy and I will not be persuaded otherwise.
Still intrigued about the inflatable egg cups. This seasons must have in my book.
Less paperwork would be nice, yes. One of the suggested ideas for industrial action (since the RCN has its no-strike policy) was that nurses could protest by refusing to fill out the forms used to calculate whether we’re hitting government targets or not, so that we’d piss off the government but wouldn’t actually compromise patient care. I just thought, well can’t we do that anyway?
As regarding tea, I’m sure it is healthy. I love a nice cuppa, me. In fact I’m drinking one now. I’m just not sure I can use the leaves to divine the future.
Who divines from tea leaves these days anyway? A bit hard to do it when you’re using a tea bag.
The inflatable egg cups are, it must be said, awesome.
I noted that, I was looking for less paperwork across the board.
The BBC are reporting that drinking tea protects you from skin cancer. If that is confirmed in the Daily Mail then it must be true. Off to put the kettle on.