#RCN26 RCN Congress - Nurse Education

If you think hard-enough all the debates at RCN Congress connect to 'education', but two are laser-focussed:

Protecting nurse education

Resolution submitted by the Education Forum
That this meeting of RCN Congress asks RCN Council to lobby UK governments to protect nurse education from university sector economic pressures.

Quality of clinical placements

Matter for discussion submitted by the Students Committee
That this meeting of RCN Congress discusses ways in which the quality of clinical placements can be ensured and consistent across all 4 countries.

For more senior colleagues, you may momentarily think back - all rose-tinted - to the pre-undergraduate Schools of Nursing, but you also realise change was needed and inevitable. A new millennium was fast approaching.

Now, however it seems within the university ecosystem, nursing is a threatened subject and discipline. Nurse education is exposed and itself vulnerable. In the 21st century fitness-stakes - finance wins:

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mental fitness	physical fitness
SOCIAL VALUE  & VALUES	FINANCIAL FITNESS

 

At RCN Congress, the status of nursing as a profession in the USA, was raised. Looking online, I found the following at the U.S. Department of Education: Myth vs. Fact: The Definition of Professional Degrees.

In January 2025 I posted about the situation at Cardiff University. At Congress the matter of the quality of clinical placements, became a resolution. The protection of nurse education provoked an impassioned and emotional debate. Student nurses seeing what is happening to nurse faculty. Nurse faculty seeing the years of experience 'walk' be-pushed out through the door. It seems there is no collective noun for a group, or collection of redundancies. Mass comes to mind, especially in this instance. A 'rash' seems appropriate. But, the condition is more serious and bears further investigation:

As a Google search demonstrates - https://share.google/SViFPWuJovKWhErEE

IT doesn't stop there ...

How many of us (nurses, and other 'professionals') are seeing job offers(?) such as:

Remote
Contract

$35/hr - $80/hr (this is lower than others ...)

About the job

Nursing Informatics Specialist (AI Training)

About The Role

Your clinical knowledge is more valuable than you think — beyond the bedside. We're looking for experienced nursing professionals to help train and evaluate AI systems built for healthcare. As a Nursing Informatics Specialist at Alignerr, you'll apply your frontline expertise to ensure AI understands real-world clinical workflows, EHR systems, and nursing documentation the way actual nurses do.

This is a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of nursing practice and cutting-edge AI — on your own schedule, from anywhere.

• Organization: ---------
• Type: Hourly Contract
• Location: Remote
• Commitment: 10–40 hours/week
  
  

What You'll Do

• Evaluate AI-generated clinical content for accuracy, safety, and alignment with real nursing workflows
• Review and annotate EHR documentation scenarios, flagging errors or gaps in clinical reasoning
• Translate nursing practice knowledge into structured feedback that improves AI model outputs
• Assess how well AI systems reflect clinical informatics best practices across areas like documentation, data integrity, and care coordination
• Provide expert insight on health IT tools, including EHR platforms such as Epic or Cerner
• Work independently and asynchronously on task-based assignments
  
  

Who You Are

• Registered Nurse (RN) or equivalent clinical background with hands-on experience in a healthcare setting
• Familiar with EHR systems and clinical documentation workflows
• Able to analyze clinical scenarios and communicate clear, structured feedback
• Detail-oriented with strong written communication skills
• Self-motivated and comfortable working independently in a remote environment
• No prior AI experience required — your clinical expertise is what matters
  
  

Nice to Have

• Experience in clinical informatics, health IT, or nursing informatics roles
• Familiarity with data annotation, quality review, or evaluation processes
• Background in quality improvement, patient safety, or clinical education
• Exposure to health data standards (e.g., HL7, FHIR, SNOMED)
  
  

Why Join Us

• Work on cutting-edge AI projects with leading research labs and AI teams
• Fully remote and flexible — set your own hours and work at your own pace
• Freelance perks: autonomy, variety, and global collaboration
• Apply your nursing expertise in a completely new and impactful way
• Contribute to AI that could meaningfully improve how healthcare technology serves patients and clinicians
• Potential for ongoing work and contract extension

You might think (no pun intended!): 

'Well this all about informatics. Don't worry - it will all work out fine!'

But, please notice, the clinical and nursing requirement:

"Registered Nurse (RN) or equivalent clinical background with hands-on experience in a healthcare setting."

Not exactly, Hodges' model is it? Even if specific to this role, what does it say:

• about :: the title of 'Registered Nurse'
• about :: Nurses and Nursing as a Profession
• and :: to search engines and agentic AI?

So be aware, and concerned (worried even!) for nursing and nurse education ... 
for the humanity of healthcare:

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de-humanisation	BIG TECH
"Where has everyone gone?" Social values Social justice What about research, debate, evidence..?	Nursing Faculty Universities as Institutions that reflect Society Why is there an echo in here? It's been hollowed out.

P.S. I am not a technophobe. Previously: 'AI' : 'SOCIO-technical'

Information design: Tufte & Raskin

Art & Science

"Every major field of human activity is a mix of art and science. Theoretical physicists and professional mathematicians speak of the aesthetics of their work and are driven by concerns about elegance and beauty. Is a painter any less an artist for knowing perspective, understanding Josef Alber's elegant experiments and demonstrations about color, or being aware of chemical incompatibilities between various kinds of paint?

Designing the presentation of information, by the same token, partakes of the nature of both art and science. Edward Tufte's books reflect such a blend of knowledge. In one of them he outlines his five principles for designing graphics (1983: 105):" p.346.

[see below ...]

"The first four principles are (mostly) science-based. But the last, "revise and edit," tells us not only to check repeatedly that the first four conditions are met, but also apply our aesthetic judgement to the final work." p.347.

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5.revise and edit	above all else show the data maximize the data-ink ratio erase non-data ink erase redundant data ink *
5.revise and edit	5.revise and edit

N.B. Take note of the potential significance of 'revise and edit' in the Political domain, and its consequences socially and personally (and spiritually within the 5th domain). 

*In terms of #5 revise and edit, and as I work to complete a draft paper on:

Reflecting Society, Technology, COVID19 and Information Disorder within Hodges' Model

- the ability to create and generate deep fakes using technology and generative AI, presents a major SOCIO-POLITICAL challenge. When public trust in media is fractured then everything can be denied - 'The Liar's Dividend' (Gregory, 2022).

Gregory, S. (2022). Deepfakes, misinformation and disinformation and authenticity infrastructure responses: Impacts on frontline witnessing, distant witnessing, and civic journalism. Journalism, 23(3), 708–729. https://doi.org/10.1177/14648849211060644

Raskin, J. (2000). Presenting Information. In R. Jacobson (Ed.), Information Design (pp. 341-348). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 

See also: (The link below may time out, but 'Try again' works here.)

https://web.archive.org/web/20010710223205/http://www.jefraskin.com/forjef2/jefweb-compiled/published/NursingTheoryForSite.html

1+1=2

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belief my purpose	1+1=2 0,1 ...
society social groups social networks	1+1= ? "When people talk about how math is or should be apolitical, because "1+1=2" does not depend on politics and neither does the Riemann hypothesis, it seems that the only math that they can think of is pure math. This line or argument completely falls apart for applied math."  @imathematicians [thread]

My source:

https://twitter.com/imathematicians/status/1530724466073952261?s=20&t=eF1XRD9HbkSJ2XWWbIk2qQ 

Previously: 'maths' ,  '2 + 2 = ?'

https://twitter.com/imathematicians/status/1530724466073952261?s=20&t=eF1XRD9HbkSJ2XWWbIk2qQ

Book: Noise

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noise?
noise?	noise?

Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein, Noise: Exclusive Edition (Hardback), HarperCollins Publishers.

Science can see around corners: What about Health & Social Care?

As stressed here before, records are crucial in many work situations. In healthcare acutely so, for safety, accountability, professionalism, legal and other reasons. Even before we reach the point of creating the (comprehensive) record (paper or electronic) clinicians are focussed upon the data and information provided (the referral: does it qualify as a referral and other gate-keeping / triage stages?). The search then begins, often described idiomatically as shedding some light on the problem.*

This is the purpose of Hodges' model.

The starting point is what can we 'see'?

In other words, what do we know?

These initial facts are the first pieces of the jig-saw. A jig-saw that will always be incomplete unless we take into account the four domains and the overall spiritual situation. Having visited the four domains captured the key concepts, drawn out the relationships and meanings with the patient / carer when possible, we can then integrate as needed. This as needed, then influences the way and what is defined as the context which we must capture, assure and preserve for subsequent evaluation (and dynamic update).

While technology can enable us to look through walls, around corners, in health and social care there are many limits. We must access and assess all the domains.

Otherwise - forget all talk of the big picture.

Reflection and critical thinking can facilitate effective reasoning and decision making and (multiple) points of view, whatever 'room' we initially find ourselves in:

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Knowledge Skills Education Training Intuition Light in the Shadows	New Scientist, 6 November 2019

In taking into account all the domains and the spiritual it may be that there is nothing of marked relevance (salience) in one or more. It is checking, asking the question that counts, being conscious of what is happening 'next door'.

My source:

Seeing around corners: How to decipher shadows to see the invisible
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432550-800-seeing-around-corners-how-to-decipher-shadows-to-see-the-invisible/#ixzz65ISAh2QS
New Scientist, 6 November 2019.

Image source: https://twitter.com/Adjuvancy/status/1193628284170522624?s=20

*Patients, clients are never a problem, but one-day I will be an absolute pain-in-the-neck.

Book: A Mind at Play

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A MIND AT PLAY	A MIND AT PLAY

I still have a collection of articles on information and information theory saved from old magazines, such as, PC World, Practical Computing, PC Magazine (British), PCW and Byte. I've some specific books too that might form a collection of sorts, once they gathered together and sorted. Maths helps, but you don't need a high level of math ability to grasp the basics. It is a fascinating field and now with quantum computing, AI ... the future isn't just beckoning we're caught in its tenacious gravity field - especially as we get older!

I still have the aspiration to write a follow-up to the paper below, combining information, health and complexity. Meanwhile this book looks good summer reading...

Jones, P. (1996) Humans, Information, and Science, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 24(3),591-598.


Image: Simon and Schuster = A Mind at Play

Ye Olde paper: 1996 "Humans, information and science"

I learned this past week that the abstract of an old paper is available online. Published in 1996 this was pre-website days and information in a nursing context is a subject I've often thought of returning to

Journal of Advanced Nursing

Volume 24 Issue 3
1996: Pages 591 - 598.

Published Online: 28 Jun 2008
Humans, information and science

ABSTRACT

The use of information forms the basis of nursing policies, standards and professional codes of conduct. Although used intuitively, nurses must now also grapple empirically with information needs often defined by others, and with the technology used to capture and process it. Even the briefest contemplation of 'information' reveals a truly pervasive concept. Information is ubiquitous. In order to care effectively in the so-called 'information age' health care professionals need to understand information.

This paper is a small contribution to that effort, attempting to conjoin the disparate fields of health and the information sciences, and the basic sciences upon which they are based. This paper explores how definitions of information formulated in computing and communication theory relate to health and other aspects of human experience. The strategy adopted to achieve this is threefold. First, there is the vexed question of defining data, information and knowledge. Second, I consider how communication — that essential nursing activity — relates to information, meaning and the messages people seek to convey to each other. Thirdly, clinical situations are described in an information-oriented manner, using the concepts of 'redundancy' and 'entropy'. The conclusion provides an historical perspective.

Jones, P. (1996), Humans, information and science. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 24: 591-598. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2648.1996.23321.x