News and Issues

Royal College of Nursing Critical Care Forum: who are we and what do we do?

The RCN has a large number of Forums and Interest Groups, which RCN members can join as part of their membership. The Critical Care Forum aims to represent its members by:

• highlighting issues to the RCN and using their power as a lobbying force;

• holding study days and conferences to share knowledge and provide a networking opportunity;

• addressing problems through working parties made up from the steering group members, link members and forum members;

• joining forces with other Critical Care organizations to address issues raised by the membership;

• representing its members on national working parties.

Our 10 000 members come from varied clinical backgrounds, including coronary care, cardiac care, high-dependency care, intensive care, and renal and burns nursing. This year, we are organizing a conference in Birmingham on 21 and 22 May, which we hope will be a great success. There will be lots of interesting plenary and concurrent papers covering all aspects of critical care nursing. We have just started a research and development working group, which is at present searching the literature to assess what work is available and, where there are gaps, we will report back in our next issue.

We also have a number of link members who work in critical care areas throughout the country and help keep us up to date, for whom we run an annual workshop, which has been evaluated as good. Each year, we attend RCN Congress to

speak regarding issues that are important to critical care nurses, so we welcome comments to inform us of these and can sometimes support members to attend in a voting capacity. We also offer a newsletter to all our members to keep them up to date with our activities, and are happy to print short articles which you think might be informative to your colleagues.

All this keeps our seven steering committee members very busy. Let me introduce everyone:

Ruth Endacott Ruth has been chair of the Forum for nearly six years and has led us through a great deal of work and change. Last year, she successfully completed her PhD. This year, she is standing down as Chair to concentrate on her work as an Independant Consultant and Expert Witness in Critical Care.

Bernadette O'Riordan Bernadette is a Senior Lecturer in ICU and programme director for a BSc(Hons) in Acute Care Nursing at Canterbury, Christchurch College. She keeps us informed on educational issues and is busy organizing our spring conference. She is at present involved in research into clinical supervision in critical care.

Judy Taylor Judy is Vice-Chair and Membership Secretary. She is at present Senior Nurse for Professional Practice at the Vale of Leven Hospital, previously she worked as a sister in an HDU. Judy also liaises with our Link members.

6 Intensive and Critical Care Nursing (1999) 15, 6-9 © 1999 Harcour t Brace & Company Ltd

Who are we and what do we do?/How well is your unit prepared for the millennium bug?

Diana Kingston

Diana works as a Clinical Nurse Specialist in a general ICU. She works regular clinical shifts, which allows her to provide support on a one-to- one basis for junior collegues. Diana is our Newsletter Editor and represents the Forum on the RCN Expert Practitioner project.

Caroline Frizelle

Caroline is at present Manager of an HDU. Previously, she worked in an ITU/CCU as a Cardiac Nurse Specialist and brings with her a great deal of cardiac experience, which broadens our expertise as a group.

Pauleen Pratt

Pauleen has recently joined the Steering Committee. She is the Nurse Manager of a busy Critical Care Unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary. Pauleen has worked at Harefield Hospital and Peterborough District Hospital, where as Senior

Sister she commissioned the CCU. Pauleen has recently commenced a Master's degree in Health Research and hopes to carry out research in the critical care arena.

And finally me!:

Deborah Dawson

I am the Directorate Nurse Manager for Critical Care in Brighton. I have a background in Adult ICU and, some years back, CCU. Recently, I have been involved in defining critical care nursing establishments, and am presently involved with the opening of our new Cardiac Centre.

I think that is enough from me for this issue. I hope you enjoy reading the remainder of our news and issues and look forward to seeing some of you at the May Conference.

Deborah Dawson Steering Committee,

Royal College of Nursing Critical Care Forum

How well is your unit prepared for the millennium bug? As the year 2000 draws ever nearer, your unit should be planning for potential equipment failure during the period of Christmas and New Year 1999/2000.

Many pieces of everyday ICU equipment contain date-sensitive microchips, which potentially will not recognize the year 2000 and may stop working. Of course, as with all clocks, they may not be recording the same time and may therefore fail at different times. Don't forget that the year 2000 is also a leap year!

There are three initiatives we can take. Firstly, it is important that all pieces of equipment are checked for compliance - this needs to be clone by the companies concerned and is often coordinated by a Year 2000 Manager and the EME department.

In addition, each unit, in conjunction with their Trust, needs to draw up contingency plans for how they will manage over this period. Things to think

about are the ufflities, especially electricity and water; are they able to provide an uninterrupted supply? If not, how can your Trust manage this?

Having thought about equipment and utilities, the third thing to think about is staffing. How many staff will the unit need to provide care to its patients while all of this is happening?

It is important that we all work as a team. This is a huge amount of work for individual units, but if Trusts work together, the workload is reduced and new ideas are generated, so that we all may be ready for the challenge.

What can individual nurses do? Perhaps ask at a staff meeting what is happening in your Trust, or offer to help in contingency planning.

Deborah Dawson Steering Committee,

Royal College of Nursing Critical Care Forum

© 1999 Harcourt Brace & Company Ltd Intensive and Critical Care Nursing (1999) 15, 6-9 7