A university nursing specialist will present a public lecture which will challenge the training driven culture within the NHS.

Professor Jan Dewing, Director of The Centre for Person-centred Practice Research at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh will discuss workplace cultures and the need to move away from the straitjacket of training to meet in order to create a vital workforce which can innovate and ultimately transform health service delivery.

The free public lecture is part of The Queen Margaret Professorial Lecture series which offers fresh angles on topics of relevance and are designed to appeal to a wide audience.

Professor Jan Dewing holds the position of The Sue Pembrey Chair of Nursing at Queen Margaret University. She will argue that, if we continue to invest in feeding the beast associated with our target driven healthcare culture, we will never satisfy its hunger.

Professor Dewing said: “Our need for compliance stifles the energy and creativity of staff. Workplace cultures require a combined excess of vitality, absorptive capacity and capability to fuel staff’s enthusiasm and creativity. This is essential in order to create a healthier more inspired and learned workforce which is capable of delivering improved levels of person-centred care across the wider NHS and private practice.”

To enable individuals to flourish in the health profession, Professor Dewing promotes the need for social based forms of ‘learning’ rather than ‘training’. The Professor will call for nurse leaders to commit to continuous improvement and innovation by promoting informal social learning, rather than relying on routine investment in yet more training. She will call for “leading learners to the edge” to be a core leadership responsibility.

The professor lecture titled ‘Workplace learning in nursing and healthcare: leading at the edge’ will take place at Queen Margaret University on Thursday 16th June 2016, 5.30pm for a 6pm start. Free places can be booked at: http://www.qmu.ac.uk/conferencesEvents/publicEvents.htm