The Nurses/AHPs... who are we and what do we want?

When I took on the role of Affiliate representative I decided it would be useful to identify who the affiliates are, partly to assist AUGIS and also to help me link with the professional groups who show interest in gaining the most from being an AUGIS affiliate.

Knowing the professional groups that make up the affiliate members will assist AUGIS in fully representing the interests of Affiliates in the future.

In October 2009 170 affiliate members were registered with AUGIS. Although not fully representative of all affiliates, the chart below illustrates the main groups that form the affiliates who responded (37% of all registered affiliates).

UGI nurses and dietitians specialising in bariatric care are the dominant groups.

The UGI nurse group includes nurses specialising in both benign and malignant disease. However the majority (80%) specialise within cancer either oesophagogastric alone, pancreatic/hepatobiliary alone or both.
The ‘other’ (3%) include endoscopy and surgical practitioners.

What interests Affiliates?

Thank you to those who returned the affiliate feedback form. The aim was to garner information on the interests and views of the affiliates to help inform future conference programmes and to help generate ideas for ways to share best practice.

21% of registered affiliates provided feedback and, of those, 43% had attended an affiliate programme at an AUGIS annual conference. The chart below shows the percentage of affiliates who provided feedback according to professional group.

91% of all respondents feel that it important to include an affiliate programme as part of the annual AUGIS conference.

Feedback was gathered on ways to improve the attendance and relevance to practice of the affiliate programme. In particular, 77% of affiliates felt that running parallel sessions according to professional group was a useful way of structuring the programme. In addition, having more key note speakers presenting on current research and new approaches in upper GI disease and bariatric care was suggested by 68% of affiliates. Other people suggested that the affiliate programme shouldn’t coincide with the AUGIS scientific programme to ensure that affiliates can benefit from attending both programmes.

So what topics interest affiliates? Affiliates were asked to indicate their interest in aspects of practice relevant to upper GI disease and bariatric care.

The chart below shows the topics of interest according to affiliates working in upper GI disease. Other topics suggested by affiliates include: nurse led follow-up issues, endoscopic therapies, nutritional benefits of jejunostomy tube feeding, endoscopic screening, pathways in HPB cancer and up date information on new research.

The main interests of affiliates working in bariatric care, which includes both dietitians and nurses, is shown in the chart below.

Other topics include assessment criteria for bariatric surgery, complications, vitamin and mineral needs and gastric balloons.

Sharing good practice

The new and improved AUGIS website offers affiliates the opportunity to easily share good practice. I encourage affiliates to submit details of audits, projects, service developments etc. that may be useful to others to improve and develop services. Equally it is a forum in which to ask for examples of audit tools, surveys, protocols to assist in service development which may be particularly useful for those working as a lone practitioner. I’m sure we all have something to offer and gain from this. Furthermore, details of study days, events, conferences can also be advertised.

I look forward to your continued support.

Jane Tallett
Affiliates Representative