Annual General Meeting & Executive Meetings

The CL SIG meets at the Annual General Meeting which is held in conjunction with the annual CL SIG conference.

The CL SIG Executive meets 4 times per year via teleconference.

Events

ACMHN CL SIG 10th Annual Conference 2012

MENTAL HEALTH NURSES: MAXIMISING POTENTIAL

7th & 8th June 2012

Pre-conference workshops 6th June

Carson Conference Centre
ANF House
540 Elizabeth St Melbourne

The focus of this conference is on the work of mental health nurses in practicesettings where mental health care is not the predominant focus. This includes general hospitals, emergency departments, nursing homes, community health centres, perinatal services and other general or specialised health services. Nurses working in these settings attend to the mental health care of clients alongside clinicians not specifically educated in mental health. This brings particular challenges and rewards. What are your experiences? What are you able to share with colleagues that help usdevelop our practice? 

Call for abstracts

ACMHN CL SIG 9th Annual Conference - wrap up

The Consultation Liaison Special Interest group Annual Conference was held at the University of Sydney this year on the 19th and 20th August. Our theme for day one was “Issues, Innovations and Intelligence in CL Nursing”.

The first morning focussed on the emotional aspects of our work. Associate Professor Kim Foster from the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Sydney was our Keynote Speaker. Kim spoke about her research into emotional intelligence in nursing “It’s not straighty 180”: putting emotional intelligence into practice. This set the scene for a facilitated discussion that was challenging and moving where CL nurses discussed the struggles and rewards of working with people facing life changing and life-limiting diseases. We focussed on dealing with death; how we support our patients and our generalist colleagues and how we cope ourselves.

We also heard from Emily Doodson who is a civilian employed by the Australian Defence Force who works in a Consultation Liaison model of care. She explained her role and the wide range of patients she sees. It was impressive to hear about the services available for members of the Defence Force.

The afternoon included themes of education of our generalist colleagues and models of service delivery. The state of Queensland has developed a state-wide model of service delivery with nurses clearly imbedded in the team. This is hopefully a precedent that other states will follow

The second day of the conference was in collaboration with Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists NSW CL Chapter with a theme “Fear and loathing on the CL trail”. This was the first time we have joined our medical colleagues and not surprisingly, this day had a much more medical focus. The keynote address and “The Issy Pilowsky Oration” was delivered by Associate Professor Ian Kerridge. This address challenged the concept of evidence-based medicine arguing that evidence-based medicine is different to ‘evidence’ ‘based’ and ‘medicine’. The focus of the remainder of the presentations on the second day was on drug and alcohol issues and ADHD in Consultation Liaison Psychiatry and a relevant and informative presentation on the management of impaired health practitioners. In addition on the second day of the conference Julie Sharrock, the chairperson of the CLSIG and Dr Jo Beatson from Victoria presented on caring for patients with a borderline personality disorder in the general hospital.

Finally, four of our more adventurous participants conquered the Harbour Bridge Climb after the conference. Well done!

We received some extremely positive feedback from the conference, in particular participants commented on the quality of the presentations on the first day and the value of the facilitated discussions. We have already started planning for our 10th anniversary conference “Mental health nurses: maximising potential” next year. It will be held in Melbourne on 7-8 June 2012 with workshops planned for the 6th June. For the anniversary conference we are collaborating with Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Nurses who will run a concurrent stream as well as join with us for the keynote presenters.

The program from the Conference can be found here.