Nursing Now, a global campaign to improve health by raising the status of nursing, launches in Ireland today
The worldwide campaign aims for the recognition of nurses’ contribution to healthcare, gender equality, wider society and improved economies. Its aims include greater investment in nursing, more nurses in leadership positions, and increasing nurses’ input and impact on healthcare. The campaign is bringing to policy makers the tangible evidence needed to show that nurses improve health and will make a crucial contribution to realising universal health coverage.
Nursing Now will run until 2020 – the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth.
INMO President and nurse Martina Harkin-Kelly said:
Patients and health staff can tell you – nurses are consistently undervalued. Nursing Now aims to change that, demonstrating the incredible work that nurses do worldwide. Not only are we the lynchpin of health services, nurses are a driving force in ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing around the world.
INMO Director of Professional and Regulatory Services Dr Edward Mathews said:
Nursing and nurses in leadership are changing the face of healthcare delivery in Ireland and worldwide. Innovative and effective developments in nurse led and delivered healthcare are improving health outcomes and delivering more economic healthcare. Fundamentally, nurses are improving lives, our society and economies and we can do more when nurses are empowered to do their job.
Speakers at the launch event in the old Richmond Hospital (Smithfield) include:
• Elizabeth Adams – President, European Federation of Nurses
• Howard Catton – CEO, International Council of Nurses
• Dame Christine Beasley - Trustee of the Burdett Trust for Nursing
• Martina Harkin-Kelly – President, INMO
The event also heard from practising nurses in Ireland, including:
• Roisin O’Connell – a student nurse in Waterford IT
• Ailish Byrne – an intellectual disabilities nurse
• Shirley Ingram – an advanced nurse practitioner in cardiology, Tallaght Hospital
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