Golden Opportunities abounding

I am back in APNA office really for the first time in 10 days. And what a ten day period it has been.
Thursday week ago, we started the APNA conference with a lovely welcome drinks and launch of the first general practice nursing textbook written by Lynne Walker, Elizabeth Patterson et al. I have just been reading the conference evaluations and overall the satisfaction was extremely high. Delegates loved the venue, the speakers and the overall program and obviously felt inspired by the whole conference. There was constructive feedback about running to time, too many choices and poor showing at the concurrent papers which we have definitely taken on board for next year. There were some comments about wanting more warning about the Health Minister coming (we would have told you if we knew!) and again many raised the cost of attending despite us reducing all registration levels by $50 this year. The cost is a real dilemma for us as we want the conference to reflect that nurses deserve a conference which is not second rate compared to medical conferences and reflects your importance in the scheme of things but our delegates are largely self funded and do not have much money. Hence we source the sponsorship levels that we do to make it as affordable as possible. The evaluation had delegates rate affordability as a concern but are less concerned re cost to APNA - unfortunately the only funds we can use to apply to the conference will come from member subscriptions and away from other member services - so it is very challenging! Feedback on how to manage this dilemma is appreciated!
The Health Minister alluded to changes in the Federal Budget on the following Tuesday night and reminded me personally as she left to be ready to go on Tuesday with media etc. I assured us that we were prepared with media releases and footage etc.
I returned home from the conference on the Sunday am (Mothers Day) to go to the opening of the new stadium for Melbourne Storm. I collapsed into bed that night and slept for 12 hours, waking on Monday am at 9am to 10 missed calls on my mobile...ABC Radio, Daily Telegraph, Ged Kearney and so on. Arggh! The PN funding news had been leaked and I then spent the next 5 hours in my PJs in our home office doing radio interviews, organising practices for journalists to visit and nurses to be interviewed. Skynews then rang wanting me to go on their PreBudget show on Tuesday am in the Canberra Studio. So I rearranged flights and accommodation to Canberra, texted my teenage girls at school to say I was disappearing again, cooked a spag bol (which nobody ate!) and headed back out to airport.
Tuesday am saw me in the Parliament House Skynews studio at 7.30am for my first ever TV experience, which went well according to the only 2 people I know who watched it - my 15yr old and hubby. Off to the National Primary Health Care Partnerships meeting and then Budget Lock-up, before retiring to hotel room to write APNA media releases.
The next morning I headed to airport at 6am for flight to Adelaide via Sydney to speak to SA Divisions Network NIGP program officers and then flight back home to Melbourne. Needless to say Thursday and some of Friday were spent in somewhat of a blur...
The Budget announcements are very exciting for nursing in general practice but have also been accompanied by anxiety. I hope you have all had a chance to look at the 'Advice to Members' document we sent out last Friday. We are very keen to have any feedback positive or negative about the changes.
Here's to a quieter couple of weeks!