Travel Scholarship Reflections

The travel scholarship from Florence Nightingale Foundation has been incredible. It has opened so many doors for me and given me the chance to explore nursing practice on a international level. I am so glad that I took the plunge and put myself forward for this opportunity. Even through at times in the process my old friend imposter syndrome made an appearance this has really been a transformative experience for me and allowed me to develop my network and help me take my career to the next stage.

If you are reading this and thinking about applying for a travel scholarship then please do! It's a fantastic experience and you will get so much out of it, not only on a personal level but it will help you change and improve practice. A saying that I heard recently has helped me push myself forward for more of these opportunities and that is:

"Be the change you want to see"

I sometimes like to explain this as what annoys you the most in practice? What can we do to help change that? So what annoys me most is people cant get access to the support they need in managing their cancer pain. What can I do to change that? Well I started small, education at a local level, then I got more ambitious and this travel scholarship helped me to do that on a national and international level. Now i've gone really big and working on my PhD on how I can develop a way to improve healthcare professional eduaction and in turn then improve the care they give to those living with cancer-related pain.

Travel Scholarship Outputs

• Set up a cancer pain specialist interested group for nurses working in the UK. This is hosted under the Pain Nurse Network.

• Developed a national survey exploring the current provision of cancer pain services in the UK. I have done this with the special interest group. This is made up of people I met in my travels.

• Poster presentation at UKONs 2022 with the findings from the national survey.

• Publication of the national survey is now in draft and will hopefully be published in Cancer Nursing Practice later this year (2023)

• Contributed to a book chapter as a result of my visit to Chicago.

• Develop this blog to share to my experience so others can be the change they want to see.

• Started a PhD! This is something id never thought I would do.