‘The wealth of expertise and experience in this room is phenomenal.’ Well we can’t disagree with this summing up of last week’s Florence Nightingale Foundation’s Member Symposium! The aims of bringing our Academy members together were to learn from each other, to plan together for the future and to celebrate what it means to be a member of the FNF Academy. All this in the impressive Royal Society of Medicine venue. 

As well as representatives from our very valued member organisations all around the country we were delighted to welcome Dr Natasha Phillips, the Chief Nursing Information Officer for England, to speak. We are all on a shared journey towards better digital nursing and midwifery and Natasha spoke passionately on the importance of leadership, education, practice, and research in achieving this. She stressed that we need to take the opportunity of using technology to advance the art and science of nursing and enable people to live their best lives. 

Members each had the opportunity to discuss in more depth – and share their own experiences – on some of the current issues and challenges we are working on in nursing and midwifery. Digital Transformation, Innovation, Clinical Supervision, Global Partnerships, Sustainability, Students and Early Career Nurses, and Embedding Research into everyday practice were all topics that would have merited their own event – but we managed to generate ideas and agree on some concrete actions in the time we had – so watch this space.  

The Member Symposium also marked the handover of the role of Chair of the FNF Academy Advisory Group. Members thanked Jacqui Reilly, the outgoing Chair, and welcomed Rosa Waddingham as the new Chair. Rosa spoke about her privilege to steer this group and take forward the next stage of Academy membership: ‘As an organisation we’ve maxed out our member benefits and now I want to give back.’ 

We launched our Academy membership in January 2020 and so far around 200,000 nurses and midwives have already benefitted from the collective engagement, energy and influence that Membership brings. By 2027, we aim to be reaching 1 million nurse and midwife leaders worldwide – if you are not already a member then join us in this journey. 

Senior nurse leaders are eligible to become members of the FNF Academy, but all the nurses and midwives in their team then receive the benefits of membership too. These benefits range from connecting with other nurses and midwives globally through our (soon to be launched) interactive online portal, exclusive online learning modules (to gain CPD), opportunity to become an FNF Fellow and discounted access to our leadership development programmes.  

‘We want to make sure people stay in love with their profession and stay in the profession.’ (Prof Greta Westwood, FNF CEO) 

Find out more by visiting the Member page on our website.