Delighted to Win Poster Competition as ‘Rookie’ Queen’s Nurse

In this blog we hear from Queen’s Nurses Corinne Beirne, Caroline Kelle and Julie Green, winners of our Queen’s Nurse Annual Meeting Poster Competition. In this blog they each share their personal experience of attending the QN Annual Meeting and displaying their work.

Corinne Beirne, Practice Nurse Manager & Karen Olorenshaw, Practice Nurse at Shipston Medical Centre – First place winners for their poster ‘Pre Diabetes – Is Diabetes Inevitable?’

I was delighted to attend the Queen’s Nurse annual meeting on Monday 23^rd April. One of the biggest motivators behind my application to become a Queen’s Nurse was to open up opportunity to network with other community nurses who are passionate about their work and experts in their field and the day certainly lived up to expectation.

Karen and I enjoyed the process of producing our poster. It gave us a chance to spend time reflecting on the project and considering the data. It also made us focus on where we want to go next in terms of follow up and further work.

As a “rookie” Queen’s Nurse, this was my first attendance at the annual meeting. I didn’t know many faces and was keen to meet people. The poster gave me an ideal opportunity to talk to many of the other attendees on the day and I met some great characters. It was wonderful to mix with nurses from so many different nursing backgrounds and to understand others perspectives. It was fabulous to receive many words of encouragement and enthusiasm for our project.

We were delighted to be awarded first prize for our poster and hope that we have inspired others to undertake similar projects.

Caroline Kelle, Practice Nurse at Hobs Moat Medical Centre – Second place winner for her poster ‘Winter Checklist – Reducing Elderly Emergency Admissions At Christmas’

My journey to the deciding to submit a poster presentation, was a slightly scary one for me for many reasons.

The Queen’s Nurse Annual Meeting took place in London… I am the first to admit I am not great with crowds and I don’t ‘do’ London – especially on the warm and busy London Marathon and FA cup semi-final weekend. I travelled up a day early to settle my nerves and make sure the poster got there in one piece – but I did it!

Rightly or wrongly I also saw myself as a ‘little practice nurse’ in amongst some highly qualified fellow Queen’s Nurses who would also be presenting their work.

I was proud of the work I had done alongside my lovely Practice Manager Sandra and receptionist Veronica and felt the Annual Queen’s Nurse Meeting was the perfect place to share it. I was amongst passionate and supportive colleagues on the day.

The QNI staff made me feel so welcome and important. I met and chatted to some very inspiring nurses who showed an interest in my work and I would like to thank them for that.

I viewed the other posters during the day; there was such a wealth of experience and knowledge displayed. At first I felt my poster was simple in comparison, but as I chatted more I realised this was a chance for ‘little old me’ to stand and be proud… and I took it!

I remember telling Aga at The QNI desk that I didn’t think for one minute I would win anything but to say thank you to The QNI team for the support.

I have taken my poster back to the practice and shared the good news – I won second place! I am over the moon and overcome, delighted to have been given the opportunity.

My advice to anyone is to ‘try it’. It really makes a difference.

Julie Green, Senior Lecturer at Keele University – Third place winner for her poster ‘What Matters To Me? The Patient Voice In Wound Care’

Being a Queen’s Nurse is something that I am really proud of! QNI conferences are always a great opportunity to hear the very best speakers and to network with a range of inspiring colleagues. Indeed, the organisation epitomises person centred care; extraordinary nurses who put their patients at the heart of all that they do!

So, I was really inspired to submit an abstract to display a poster at the April All Queen’s Nurse event. That was back in January. My current work explores the impact of chronic wounds on the quality of life of the patient and this represented an opportunity to develop a poster to showcase a newly developed generic checklist designed for patients with a wound to complete themselves. I wrote a brief abstract and I heard in March that my application had been successful.

Then came the challenge of developing the poster! The development of an effective poster is an art; it requires enough information to engage the audience but not too much to put an interested delegate off!! It needs to be eye catching and interesting. The new wound checklist had been developed in conjunction with a Learning Disability charity group called Reach who had worked on an earlier template that I had developed to ensure that it was accessible to all people to complete without too much assistance. My daughter, a talented artist, had illustrated the checklist and also helped to develop the submitted poster.

The day arrived for my trip to London to display the poster. The venue was the Royal College of General Practitioners HQ, just next to Euston Station; a lovely, convenient location. Throughout the day, many colleagues came to look at the poster and to discuss the new wound checklist. We had added a QR code to the poster to allow people to download a trial ‘app’ version on their mobile device – quite a few delegates took advantage of this download. I also supplied paper copies to everyone who was interested and encouraged people to have a go at using the template in practice.

Delegates ranged from District Nurses, Practice Nurses, Service Leads, Senior Nurses, Tissue Viability Nurses – it was great to have so much interest! Posters were manned during every refreshment break so chatting to passing delegates was quite relaxing.

At the end of the day, poster competition winners were announced by Professor Alison While. What a surprise! Our poster was awarded third prize – the icing on the cake, as attending such a professional and positive event was such a great opportunity to spread the news about a new wound checklist!

Congratulations to all the Queen’s Nurses who submitted poster presentations to be displayed at our All Queen’s Nurse Annual Meeting. 

Photo credit: Kate Stanworth