The Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) has championed the voices and value of general practice nurses (GPNs) in its first GPN Network launch event.
The event, held remotely this week and attended by Nursing in Practice, was the first meeting of the institute’s newly founded network for practice nurses.
Established in July, the network now has over 700 members, with 500 members joining within a day of the network’s launch.
Dr Crystal Oldman, chief executive of the QNI, said the network is an opportunity for GPNs ‘to share your experiences and your voice’.
And she urged nurses to ‘be at the table, or risk being on the menu’.
The network will meet via webinars four times a year, with a new quarterly newsletter and GPN Facebook group being used to share information and advice amongst the network.
Some of the webinars will have a clinical focus, enabling attendees to discuss ‘innovative approaches’ for improvement and best practice in primary care.
Angie Hack, assistant director of nursing programmes at the QNI, started the event by acknowledging the ‘postcode lottery’ of general practice nursing, encouraging GPNs to ‘speak about your worth’ and calling for more consistency in GPN education and employment conditions.
‘I really hope for you out of this that you get some headspace for your learning and time for you to consider collaborating with your contemporaries and to raise the profile and your voice for general practice nursing,’ Ms Hack said.
‘It’s really important that you have a voice and I’m hoping these webinars will help you, and that the Facebook group will help you to start to have confidence in who you are, and to discuss and articulate your worth.’
