Specialist NF Nurses/ Advisors’ Conference 2023

On 16th and 17th November 2023 we held our annual Specialist NF Nurses/Advisors' conference in London.

The team, lead by Rebecca Rennison, who has just been appointed as the charity's new Lead Nurse, were also joined by our two newest members Charmaine Forrester (London) and Sarah Cockcroft (Yorkshire & Humberside) for the first time.

On the first day, the NTUK team were joined by Judith Eelloo, Lead Nurse Nationally Commissioned Complex NF1 Service, St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester; Mandy Myers, Paediatric NF Clinical Nurse Specialist and Mary Thomas, NF Lead Advanced Nurse Practitioner, both from Guys & St. Thomas' Hospital in London, and Juliette Buttimore, Lead Clinical Nurse Specialist, from Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, who each gave presentations on their areas of expertise, and how the charity's network of regional Nurses could collaborate with the Specialist Services.

The day ended in a question and answer session covering treatments and developments from a medical and carers perspective. In the evening we were joined by a number of the charity's trustees. It helps the trustees with strategic planning to meet with the team of nurses as they are the ones in direct contact with, and in meeting, the NF community every single day.

Day 2 started with presentations from five PHD students, under the stewardship of Doctor Shruti Garg, who are based at The University of Manchester, and whose research projects are centred around NF. We then moved on to organisational and operational issues concerning the Specialist Nurses team, and planning for the future. 

The meeting is a great opportunity to gain valuable insight from all our nurses on their work, their support to the community, and how we can improve and roll out our services further.