From a half-day session with 30 nurses at the 2009 congress in Vienna and last year in Madrid with 70 nurses attending the nurse day, this year in Copenhagen was a success! Increased online networking spread the news about the session to a wide range of orthopaedic nurse associations around Europe. More than 200 nurses from 25 countries attended the nurse led sessions at the EFORT congress. The Danish local nurse representative, Kirsten Specht had done fantastic work arranging for visits to three hospitals in Copenhagen on May 31st: Bisbebjerg, Hvidovre and Rigshospitalet. Unfortunately not as many nurses as we had hoped were able to participate at the hospital visits. However, for all of us who did participate, this was a very interesting experience.
Thank you to Kirsten and the local teams!
On June 1st we had a whole day of presentations, poster viewing and workshops at our disposition. The morning session started with a welcome to Copenhagen by Grete Kristensen, president of the Danish Nurse’s organisation followed by lectures from Elaine Collins, chair SOTN, UK who spoke about clinical quality in customer care and Julie Santy, editor of the International Journal of Orthopaedic and Trauma Nursing, UK whose lecture was entitled Recognising compartment syndrome ….. and keeping yourself out of the court room. Twelve nurses promoted the science of nursing in orthopaedic and trauma care at the free paper session by presenting their research findings and their experiences. The companies Convatec and Grünenthal supported the nurse ay by sponsoring a lunch symposium followed by workshops on The right dressing does make a difference (Convatec) and pain management within orthopaedic patients (Grünenthal).
During the afternoon coffee break (sponsored by Smith & Nephew) everybody had an opportunity to view and discuss the poster before further short presentations took place. This was a successful Nurse Day that offered a high-quality scientific programme and time for networking and meeting old and new friends.
Ami Hommel
