RCNi Conference Trip Report – Leanne-Jo Holmes, ARNS Research and Education Sub Committee
by Leanne-Jo Holmes
A bursary from ARNS part-funded and facilitated the opportunity for me to attend the RCNi conference in September this year.
The RCNi conference is an annual conference appropriate for any nurses interested in nursing research. The conference showcases the best of nurse research and provides an excellent platform and opportunity for networking, sharing ideas, affords an opportunity to learn from each other and also to hear from some inspirational and thought-provoking key-note speakers.
As a nurse consultant in severe asthma, often I attend conferences with a respiratory theme, for me personally the highlight of the conference was being exposed to the extraordinary research which spanned all spheres of nursing to see and recognise that irrespective of our specialty we all face the same challenges yet can collaborate to learn from each other and overcome these challenges.
The conference this year had a theme of “Inclusivity in nurse research working together to make a difference” and this theme ran strongly throughout the agenda.
Professor Roxanne Crosby-Nwaobi, in her keynote address – “Nursing whilst Black: Trials, tribulations, and successes”, shared her own personal journey, challenges and experiences of discrimination within her nursing & research career. Whilst facing discrimination, she has manged to accrue a successful research portfolio, with a significant list of professional accolades and has made substantial improvements in patient care, through promoting equity of access to eye health, in underserved communities. Listening to her honestly speak about her negative experiences really was emotive and hard to hear but needed to be heard, discrimination in any guise has no place in nursing. She really provided an opportunity to reflect upon our own perceptions, behaviours and how as a collective we can address and have a zero tolerance to inequality in healthcare and challenge racial and gender discrimination.
Professor Annette Hand spoke about the importance of the career, and how often when caring for the patient the carer and their needs is overlooked. She spoke about the substantial contribution to patient care made by carers and her doctoral work which focussed on carer burden (often emotional, physical and financial). The 2021 census estimated there are around 5million unpaid careers in the UK, of which I’m sure a significant proportion care for patients with respiratory disease. This really made me reflect upon my own area of nursing and consider how both myself and team can begin to consider and support carer burden within our own cohort.
Patient and public engagement ran strongly through the agenda and a plenary session on the importance of involving patients in planning research, co-presented by health professionals and patients involved in research design was particularly insightful, and really highlighted how involving patients and their lived experience from the development of a research idea, throughout all phases of research can help to develop better research and maximise recruitment.
Undertaking my own PhD exploring outcomes, experiences and support needs of young adults with severe asthma, I have begun to highlight young adults are a underserved and under recognised group, with their outcomes often being lost amongst paediatric and adult datasets. At the conference Tara Searle presented her initial research outcomes highlighting that teenagers and young adults (15-24) are often being excluded from cancer trails due to research exclusion criteria is often based upon age rather than having a biologic basis. The implications of this is that, this age group are being considerably hampered in accessing novel treatments, which consequently impacts upon quality of life, prognosis and upon survival rates. This really highlighted the importance of ongoing nursing research across young adults and highlights how as nurses we really can use research to advocate for our patients, to question existing care and process’s using nurse research to help improve patient care and outcomes, particularly in underserved under-represented groups.
Finally, I was delighted to be able to deliver a spoken session, presenting the first phase of my own PhD “the psychosocial experience of living with severe and uncontrolled asthma as a young person: A qualitative synthesis” My study highlighted that young adults with severe and uncontrolled asthma often live with a significant negative impact upon their psychosocial wellbeing as consequence of living with their disease. This review also highlighted that more research is required within this cohort to begin to understand their experiences and support needs, which leads me into my second phase of my PhD, that hopefully I will be able to present at RCN international nurse conference next year!
Leanne-Jo Holmes, ARNS Research and Education Sub Committee