Excellence in Communications via a Live Event or Stand-Alone Activity

Summary of work

Effective communications skills are central to the provision of quality nursing care. This concept sits at the heart of the Royal College of Nursing’s Principles of Nursing Practice. Despite this, there is a lack of training opportunities for nurses to enhance their communications skills.

Porter Novelli was challenged to support nurse understanding of the communications needs of cancer patients at all stages of their disease, and provide a forum for the exchange of experiences and best practice approaches in this area.

Porter Novelli invited nurses to attend a two-day meeting focused on challenges in nurse-patient communication in oncology. In addition to assembling an expert faculty, the meeting employed a variety of different means of communication itself, including live question submission and voting technology to fuel discussion, an agenda incorporating different types of delegate interaction, and the provision of networking technology to facilitate future communication between delegates.

A strong agenda meant 125 nurses applied for 70 places available; 100% of delegates said they would attend a similar event in the future, 90% rated the usefulness and relevance of the symposium as either excellent or very good, and 76% said they’d change their clinical practice based on learnings from the event.

Judges' comments

A high proporotion of nurses attending the event said they would change their practice as a result of this work. Clearly it was absolutely right for the target audience. A solid and very well written entry.