The Society is now in its second decade and continues to provide a national network for nurses and allied professionals working in vascular care.

Welcome to the SVN website. We have developed the site considerably over the last 12months and we hope that you will agree that it is now a really useful site that serves the needs of our members well. There are several new features including the ability to renew membership and register for conferences online. Please use the site and gain as much from it as you can.

We have just returned from our Annual Conference at Liverpool and although for me personally the event was very hectic I enjoyed the event very much. The James Purdie Prize presentations were extremely professional and informative and also diverse in their areas of focus. The Poster Presentation was also well received and I do hope that at our next conference in Brighton 2010 we will have more entries for this competition. We were very lucky to obtain very eminent speakers in their field and I believe that the programme was comprehensive and educational.

I feel very honoured to be taking over as your President. I know that I have a hard act to follow as Sue Ward my predecessor worked extremely hard to develop our society, and I very much want to continue in the same tradition. Our patients are sometimes not the focus of general attention when it comes to funding either from government sources or from charities and therefore we as the healthcare professionals who have the privilege of caring for these patients have a responsibility to ensure that we stand up for our patients rights to quality care provided by well trained and dedicated staff.

Wendy Hayes.

President

Society of Vascular Nurses.