Freedom to Nurse

A weekend CPD seminar for those in the profession of nursing: How can nursing live and thrive today

This weekend invites nurses in practice to create, together with us, inspiration so that the initiative to nurse may breathe more freely in participants.

What led to your original intention and choice to nurse?
Where are you in relation to that now?
Are you still able to fulfil that intention today, or does your work environment inhibit and even prevent this?

The vocation of nursing is suffering in our time. Some even say that it is hardly possible to be a nurse nowadays. Experiencing pain and suffering calls us all into the present moment. What does a nurse bring into the present moment in response to the calls from others and in ourselves? There is more to nursing than the sum of its techniques. What more can the individual nurse bring? What did Florence Nightingale’s patients experience that has become associated with her lamp? How can the initiative to nurse thrive today?

How can nursing thrive more freely in the current pressures where so much needs to be done by so few? We will learn how the processes of life weave through social environments and how the understanding of these processes can be woven into nursing practice, bringing life into the therapeutic relationship.

Recognising the fundamental initiative within the vocation of nursing is significant for each nurse within their specific context. During this weekend we will inquire collaboratively, through the lived experience of participants, toward a deeper understanding of today’s challenges to individual health and dignity, and a recognition of opportunities to respond in each participants’ context.

Participants will be offered practical strategies and personal development exercises to apply in their work and will also be encouraged to create their own. There will be opportunity to give and receive simple body therapies that can balance stress symptoms. These can be aids to self-care and contributions to nursing patients. Exercises will be offered that open new ways of meeting nature.

A path of schooling for nurses was born in May 1925, out of the collaboration between Rudolf Steiner and Dr Ita Wegman. This development would build upon nursing care and intervention, with a truly holistic approach to the vocation of the nurse as well as those in need of nursing care. Nurses were inspired with natural nursing treatments and methods of spiritual and social support for their work with patients. This weekend seminar aims to build upon this path of schooling, offering practical Insights and solutions toward a possible path forward for the needs of nursing today and into the future.

The weekend will include:

The current plight of nursing in the UK
Sharing personal challenges and ways of coping
Inquiring into underlying causes
What is healing?
Creative activities
Inner development practices
Steps to a more living relationship with nature
Body therapies & self-care
Ways forward?

Tutors

Hannah Spreadborough trained as a Nurse at St. Thomas’ Hospital London before specialising in Paediatrics at The Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children Brighton. Since then, she has worked in a wide variety of both clinical and community settings. She currently works within the NHS in Scotland as a Staff Nurse on a Paediatric Unit incorporating Emergency Department Work.

John Ralph has worked in social care in England and Scotland and as course leader in University of Aberdeen. He is a lifelong researcher of life, humanity and creativity, a musician, eurythmist and poet.

Dr Michael Evans is an independent GP and leader of the English Training in Anthroposophic Medicine in the UK. He has a special interest in experiential learning.

Cost

The cost of this long weekend CPD Course is £350.

(This includes the course fees, and two nights of accommodation and meals at Emerson College. Should you wish to stay locally rather than at the College, the course fees are payable separately to accommodation and meals.)

Course fee – £150 – click here to apply

Accommodation & meals – £220 – booking available from 1 March

Programme

Below is the programme from 2024, we expect this year’s programme to be similar: