Nursing Now! A global movement

Section: Editorial

How to quote

Zabalegui Yarnoz A. ¡Enfermería ahora! un movimiento global Metas Enferm dic 2019/ene 2020; 22(10):3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.35667/MetasEnf.2019.22.1003081510

Authors

Adela Zabalegui Yarnoz

Position

Doctora en Enfermería por la New York University. Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. Miembro de la Junta de la Campaña Nursing Now!

Contact email: azabaleg@clinic.cat

Versión en Español

Título:

¡Enfermería ahora! un movimiento global

Nursing Now! is an on-going global campaign (2018-2020), with the objective of improving patient care and population health through an increase in nursing status. This initiative arises from the Triple Impact report by the British Parliament, specifically by the APPG Global Health work group (http://www.appg-globalhealth.org.uk/), it is led by the International Council of Nursing (ICN) jointly with the World Health Organization (WHO), and managed by the Burdett Trust for Nursing (UK). Nursing Now! includes regional groups formed by different countries, and also national and local groups in each country. These groups are spreading information and demonstrating the contribution of nurses for achieving universal health coverage. Besides, the strengthening in Nursing will result in additional benefits, such as the promotion of gender equity and the economic development of countries; and it will encourage working towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.

Nursing occupies a central position in the overall Health System, including health promotion. Nurses represent half of the healthcare staff in the world setting, and provide the majority of professional care. Regardless of this unquestionable contribution, nurses are often undervalued, and their area of action becomes limited, which makes it impossible for them to maximize their knowledge and skills. These restrictions represent a major loss in the use of their skills. In many cases, this reality occurs alongside with deficient salaries and care settings.

Nursing Now! has five specific objectives:
1.    A higher investment in order to improve education, professional development, rules, regulation, and job conditions of nurses.
2.    Higher and better information about effective and innovative Nursing practices.
3.    A higher influence of nurses in international and national health policies. To ensure a greater involvement by nurses in decision making.
4.    More nurses in leadership positions, and more development opportunities at all levels.
5.    More evidence for those responsible for policies and decision making about the places where Nursing can have a higher impact, what prevents nurses from reaching their highest potential, and how to address these barriers.

This campaign started with a survey for nurses throughout the world, about: What achievements would you expect this campaign to reach? The participants answered:
–    To inform the society and decision-makers about the role that Nursing must play in the 21st century, outlining their multidimensional role and their position throughout the clinical pathway, and avoiding the single focus on the hospital setting.
–    To level the different ranks in healthcare in order to improve health policy, boosting the position of Nurses to improve their current status as secondary actors at the decision-making table, even in matters belonging to the Nursing profession.
–    To spread information and emphasize the concept that nurses are not only important in terms of healthcare, but that their contribution as healthcare workers increases economic safety and community cohesion, and also improves the education level of the population.
–    To extend the access to Nursing as a profession, both in terms of gender and class.
–    To create and promote the Nursing voice in a coordinated and unified manner, in order to spread a coherent message, avoiding competition between different practices.
–    To pursue as final objective an improvement in patient care and safety through universal health coverage.
–    To develop Nursing as an appealing profession, showing its involvement in the implementation of real changes, and its influence in the definition of healthcare policies.
–    To encourage and educate the next generation of Nursing Leaders.
–    To promote those global connections existing within the profession, making them inclusive and ensuring their involvement in those communities where they are poorly represented,

2020 will be the International Year of the Nurse, and also the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. That is why we have launched the Nightingale Challenge, which intends to train 20,000 young nurses (< 35-year-old) in leadership, because they are the future of our profession. We invite institutions to join our Nightingale Challenge through the Nursing Now website (www.nursingnow.org). Besides, social networks are being used to reach all nurses and encourage their active and open involvement in the groups, events and actions in each country.

The Metas de Enfermería journal wants to celebrate this Year 2020, declared the Year of the Nurse and Midwife by the World Health Organization; and to this aim, all its editorial articles will deal with the Nursing Now! Campaign in the global setting. I have been invited to start this initiative with this first editorial; and I want to end it with the wish that an active involvement of the Spanish nurses in this campaign may have an undoubted impact on global health. 

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