Practice and Nursing Issues Committee
Report to the ISTM Executive Board — Florence, May 14th 2002

Committee Members: Rebecca Acosta (USA), Lorna Boyne (Scotland), Lynne Bunnell (USA), Fiona Genasi (Scotland), Sheila Hall (Scotland), Nancy Jenks (USA), Ed Lister (USA), Jeannett Martin (England), Eeva Pekkanen (Finland), Lynn Rogers (Canada), Gail Rosselot (USA), Shoko Umemura (Japan), Megan Williams (New Zealand)

New Members: Susan Koeman (Netherlands)

Chairs: Fiona Genasi, Rebecca Acosta

The full committee previously met in Innsbruck 2001, and communication since then has been by E-mail. Some of the members based in the USA have managed to meet on several occasions.

Activities:

• Proposals for New York 2003. The committee pulled together a comprehensive proposal for the CISTM8 program, including ideas for workshops and symposia. This involved soliciting ideas from the membership. Segments of the proposal have been selected for inclusion in the program and members of the committee are actively participating as speakers at the conference.
• Continuing Education Credits (CEU) for nurses. Several committee members are working with the CISTM8 organizers to ensure that CMEs are available for nurses who attend.
• Communicating with membership. An update on the work of the committee was posted in NewsShare in March/April 2002. It offered help with setting up local travel health groups and encouraged nurses to submit abstracts for presentation in New York.
• Research. Several committee members are working on developing research guidance, particularly for the novice - providing assistance for individuals who need help in drafting abstracts and designing posters for submission to CISTM8, for example. This would hopefully encourage more nurses to submit their work for presentation.
• Certificate of Knowledge Examination. Several members of the committee are closely involved with development of the Examination initiative and have been writing for the question bank.

Proposed activities:

• Working with the Professional Education and Training Committee. Now that the PETC no longer has the burden of developing the exam, it is hoped that there will be more time to develop mutual initiatives.
• Nursing survey on travel medicine practice. Comparison of nursing practice internationally. A session to present the results has been allocated for CISTM8 in New York. (An interactive workshop for nurses was held at CISTM7 in Innsbruck in 2001 to consider nursing practice internationally. This involved pre-set questions and audience voting using handsets. Unfortunately, on that day the technology failed and we were unable to show any meaningful results. We plan on modifying the questions which were devised for that session and use them to survey the nurse membership of ISTM around October.)
• Developing further research guidance initiatives. The idea of a "research package" has been proposed.
• Securing committee representation from a wider geographic area. This has proven difficult and will require renewed effort in the future.
• Keeping in touch with the membership, mainly through NewsShare, ISTM postings and conferences.
• Organizing a "Welcome Meeting" for New York. The welcome meeting which was held in Innsbruck was hugely successful and we hope to be able to plan a similar one for CISTM8. The committee will liaise with the Program Organizers regarding this.