The Nursing Committee has been engaged in conducting and planning several activities for 2018 In September, Donna Bliss and Kathleen Hunter taught in the first ICS sponsored educational courses and hands-on workshops in China. They presented on the management of urinary and faecal incontinence and advanced nursing practice in three cities: Ningbo, WuHu, and Hefei. Approximately 75-150 nurses attended each course. If you are interested in being a faculty presenter in an ICS course, remember to register in the new ICS faculty database at https://www.ics.org/members/faculty.
The book, Management of Fecal Incontinence for the Advanced Practice Nurse, edited by Donna Bliss, and written by an international group of nurse and physician authors, most of whom are ICS members, was published by Springer, France, just in time for the 2018 ICS meeting. It can be purchased as an e-book and in hard copy at https://www.springer.com/.
The Bladder and Bowel Training Consensus document is entering its third and final review. Using a Delphi procedure, 20 nurse members of ICS are reviewing the document developed by the ICS Nursing Committee. The final review will be completed by the end of the year. Project chair, Jo Booth, and co-chair, Donna Bliss, will then finalize the format of the document. They plan to develop a publication as well.
Upcoming activities of the Nursing Committee build on a previous project of the committee regarding roles and competencies of the continence nurse. The first project aims to compile and describe existing competencies of nurses and non-nurses needed to meet the continence nursing care needs of individuals in all stages of life and across different healthcare settings. Look for future news about assisting with this project, which is chaired by Joan Ostaszkiewicz. The Nursing Committee is engaged in a strategic planning process to assist in identifying and prioritizing future projects and activities.
For the 2019 annual meeting in Gothenberg, Sweden, the Nursing Committee is planning to offer a workshop as well as the annual Nursing Forum. Joanne Robinson, the new chair of our Education and Practice Subcommittee, Joanne Dean, and Donna Bliss, are currently planning international speakers to discuss topics of currency and interest for both sessions. We also plan to offer the nurses networking lunch on the same day of the workshop and forum. This has become a popular time at the annual meeting for nurse attendees to meet and network with the Nursing Committee members and other colleagues. We hope to see you there.
Finally, the ICS Nursing Committee encourages nurses to submit a research/scientific abstracts for the 2019 ICS annual scientific meeting. There were many interesting abstracts presented by nurses last year, and we look forward to more in the future.