Inflammatory Bowel Disease Special Interest Group Report of the NZ IBD Nurses Committee as Sub-Committee to NZgNC

Committee: Marian O’Connor (Chair), Jacqui Stone (past chair), Kirsten Arnold (Co-chair), Karen Murdoch (secretary), Carly Bramley (Education lead)

Report Date: April 2023 Prepared By: Marian O’Connor Reporting Period: Sept 2022 – Apr 2023

The NZIBDNG committee continues to meet every 4-6 weeks virtually (via zoom), on your behalf and have been working on the following:

EDUCATION: IBD Nurses Meeting

• The NZ IBD Nurses meeting took place on Tuesday the 22nd of November 2022 at the Cordis Hotel in Auckland with 28 nurses attending. The theme for the day was ‘Bottom’s up’ with presentations on haemorrhoids & perianal disease, distal IBD, pouch surgery with three clinical case studies presentations on aphthous ulcers, fistulising crohn’s disease and rectal drug therapy.

• The feedback from the study day was overwhelmingly positive with learning for changes to clinical practice which will have a positive impact on patient care.

• The committee are grateful to NZgNC and NZSG for their support as well as Pharmaco and Janssen for educations grants which allows us to financially support this event.

• In addition, we are also grateful to Janssen and Pharmaco whom have generously supported us with education grants to support our costs of this meeting.

• Save the date – 24th of August 2023, Ibis Hotel Hamilton

• The committee are working on our 2023 NZIBD Nurses Education Day and have recently sent out a save the date with request to RSVP.

GENCA & IBDNA

• Marian O’Connor and Carly Bramley as part of the NZ IBD Nurses committee continue to collaborate with IBDNA and GENCA to aid in providing support and resources for AU and NZ

• The IBDNA Education Sub-committee (which Carly is a member of) are currently working on the IGNITE Foundation school set to launch in April 2023 – this will be advertised to the wider NZ IBD Nurse group once the flyers are published

• The IBDNA Education Sub-committee are also working on the Advanced IBD School set to run in September 2023 – again this will be sent out to the wider NZ Nurses group

• Dr. Falk Webinars can also be accessed by GENCA members, and these will be advertised via the GENCA forums

Call To Action

• A Call to Action (published in Tube, Volume 48 / Issue2 August 2022) was written by the committee and co-signed by Merrilee Williams (chair of NZgNC) to highlight the very low numbers of IBD Nurses nationally and the fact that we have lost staff to resignations over the past 18 months.

• Since then, we have sent a letter to the Minister of Health (Nov ’22) to state the case for a minimum number of IBD nurses per patient population (1 TFE to 600 patients). This resulted in a prompt reply from the minister of health at that time, Hon Andrew Little and a request for Te Whatu Ora to review and respond to our letter

• Te Whatu Ora replied (Nov 2022) in a letter which acknowledged our concerns and outlined a plan to boost the health workforce in Aotearoa. We are currently in the process of replying to this letter with specific requests related to IBD Nurse recruitment in Aotearoa. Once we have sent this letter, we will share this via NZgNC and the IBD Nursing membership

Committee Members

• We are delighted to welcome Two new committee members who have self-nominated to join the committee and replace those members whom have requested to step-down – Donna Howe will replace Karen Murdock as secretary – Nideen Visesio will replace Carly Bramley as Education lead

• There will be a transition period over the next few months as the new committee members are supported by the outgoing members