Nursing Live: your chance to contribute to the profession's future

Nursing Live visitors will be able to keep up to date on the latest trends, take part in debates and attend sessions specifically for learning disability nurses

Learning disability nursing is being represented at next month’s Nursing Live.

The event, at ACC Liverpool on 10 and 11 November, is expected to attract thousands of nurses. Planned as a celebration of nursing it will provide a chance to update yourself on current trends and debates in the profession, and is an educational opportunity.

• RELATED: Aspiration pneumonia: why is it so common and how do you manage it?

Sessions specifically for learning disability nurses include making hospitals neurodiversity friendly, transition of children with learning disabilities into adult services, and the role of genomics in transforming diagnosis of rare syndromes, autism and learning disability.

On the second day, barrister and lecturer Neil Allen, of the University of Manchester, will provide an update on case law developments under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and deprivation of liberty in domestic settings. Readers who have attended our Learning Disability Practice conferences in the past may remember Mr Allen and he is not to be missed.

• RELATED: Dysphagia: what learning disability nurses need to know

Also on the programme is Gerard Wainwright, the winner of the learning disability nursing category at the RCN Nursing Awards 2022. He won that award for the unsafe swallow project which is raising awareness of the dangers of dysphagia and aspiration pneumonia.

Those interested in the history of learning disability nursing may be interested to see a video that he has produced about the former Stansfield View Hospital in Calderdale, West Yorkshire.

The isolated former Victorian workhouse became a long-stay hospital in 1948, was closed in 1993 under the community care deinstitutionalisation policy and has since been demolished. Mr Wainwright describes movingly what it was like to nurse there and narrates some of the personal stories of others who lived and worked there.

• RELATED: A century of learning disability nursing

During the two-days of Nursing Live we will find out who succeeds Mr Wainwright as the learning disability nurse of the year and the overall RCN Nurse of the Year.

Christine Walker, editor Learning Disability Practice