Reasons NOT to attend the 2023 PCRS Conference

Let’s face it, there are LOTS of reasons NOT to attend the 2023 PCRS Conference regardless whether you have attended one before:

• You’re overworked and understaffed, why would you spend your precious annual leave doing more work when you could be sitting in front of the TV with a hot drink, donning a pair of slippers or quite frankly lying on a beach?
• There is no way your Practice Manager will let you take a day off for this. You went on that respiratory course last year and you won’t get the time off let alone the funding to attend another one.
• You do asthma reviews at your practice but you certainly don’t feel qualified enough to rub shoulders with respiratory experts. You’ll be a laughing stock.
• More to the point, you’ve seen the cost. It’s out of the question. Nothing is getting cheaper and not a day goes by that the press are not reminding you of the cost of living crisis.
• Attending a conference is a luxury not a necessity. A luxury to you is a spa not a work conference.
• You’ve never been to a conference before and don’t know anybody who is going or has any interest in respiratory. You’ll be nervous, shy and awkward and you certainly don’t want to pay and be forced to attend some dinner with a load of strangers. You’d rather poke your eyes out!
• Why is it not free and virtual? It’s not exactly very eco-friendly driving to Telford is it? In fact, where on earth is Telford even? It sounds miles away. How are you going to get there and where are you going to stay?
• Yes, you agree the feedback below from delegates looks amazing but let’s face it you’re not exactly going to post the negative feedback are you?

“This is THE respiratory conference to attend - to challenge thoughts and processes and to encourage behaviour change!”

"I am totally blown away with the calibre and quality of this conference”

“A fantastic conference - probably the best I have been to.”

"This is a very good and well organised conference with lots of take home messages and ideas to put into practice.”

"I have been highly impressed by the organisation, standard and quality of presentations and the holistic approach of this conference.”

The list goes on and on. Have you, though, stopped to think:

‘What happens if I don’t go to the 2023 PCRS Conference?’

You are reading this because you already have an interest in respiratory. How do I know this? Well in order to receive PCRS In-Touch you are on the PCRS mailing list and have clicked on the link to this blog post. There is a reason you have ended up on our mailing list - you may have attended one of our webinars or our live events, you may have been a member before, attended a Leaders event or you are a member of one of our Peer Support Networks. Somewhere inside of you there is a match waiting to be lit or a springboard waiting to catapult you to the next level of your respiratory journey. Something inside of you has said ‘I’m curious, tell me more’.

There is no right or wrong way to carve out a path as a respiratory leader but, if you are in any doubt, the fact that you are reading this probably makes you a respiratory leader in one way or another. Maybe you are a GP forced into a role of respiratory lead, a nurse doing Asthma and COPD reviews unsure whether you are doing it right, nervous to admit to your boss that you struggle with spirometry. Maybe you are a pharmacist overwhelmed with the IIF and struggling to convince your colleagues that although blanket switches of inhalers might make some money it is not the right thing to do for your patient's asthma control. Or maybe you are a respiratory nurse specialist who has stumbled upon this blog and needs to rediscover a love for respiratory while juggling burnout and exhaustion.

Nobody can force you to attend a face to face conference; believe me as the hosts if we could we would!

We can’t tell you “that of course you can afford it” - just stop buying take-away coffees, start putting money aside each month, ask your GP colleagues or Practice Manager to pay for it or sacrifice a weekend away with loved ones to spend it in Telford with strangers.

We can’t force you, if you are a nurse, to talk to your local training hubs and see if you are eligible for £300 per year of funding to be used on events just like this one.

We can’t force you to track down your local Respiratory Netowrk lead, Peer Support Network to see if there are any colleagues who might be interested in going and maybe even share a lift.

We can’t tell you to bring it up at a practice meeting, see if anybody else would be interested in coming along with you to see if the reviews are really true.

We can’t force you to take a closer look at the Early Bird rate and make you stop and think that maybe this really is a pretty good deal and it may just be a fantastic offer and the start of something special.

We can’t force you to look at the programme as it fills up with inspirational speakers; some of whom you would never dare to dream about being in the same room as.

Attending the 2023 PCRS Conference has got to be your decision and yours alone. Somehow you need to figure out whether this is right for you. Whether you want to invest in yourself and the care of your patients wth respiratory disease.

10 years ago I attended my first PCRS conference in Edinburgh and I talked to...nobody. I felt like an imposter, somebody who didn’t belong there. Somebody who failed respiratory physiology at university and was forced into the respiratory lead at my practice against my wishes. That conference, though, was the spark that lit my fire.

We really hope you will join us in September.

Registration is now open for PCRS members

This year we are offering a special registration rate exclusively for PCRS members.

Starting at £150, this rate will only be available until Monday 6th March - limited places are available at this rate so register now.