(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
Doha: Chief Nursing Officer, World Health Organization, Elizabeth Iro has said that there is an absence of nursing leadership in senior national posts, and their voice as advocates for better health for all is often unheard.
Referring to the COVID-19 pandemic, she added that nurses have been exposed to and affected by the consequences of inadequate planning, and that nursing leaders must contribute to the strategies that ensure that this situation never happens again.
Iro was speaking at“Nurses at the forefront of change: challenging the status quo,” a virtual event co-hosted by the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), Qatar Foundation’s global health initiative, and Nursing Now Challenge, a global program to promote leadership in nursing.
“Our workforce is fragile, but as we move forward we have learned the importance of having senior nursing leaders at the tables where decisions around the strategy and planning are made.
"Healthcare services rely on nurses, so nurses must be involved in the decision around how they are delivered,” said Iro.
Also joining the event was Sir Michael Marmot, Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London (UCL) and Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity.
He hailed the findings in the recent WISH report Nurses for Health Equity: Guidelines for Tackling the Social Determinants of Health, which was at the center of discussion during the event’s first session.
“I think it’s a landmark report and shows a way for all of those who are involved in health, whether in public health or in the wider social determinants of health, to move forward to create fairer societies, with a fairer distribution of health equity,” said Sir Michael.
Elizabeth Iro
The session, presented by the report’s lead author, Dr. Billy Rosa Chief Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, also heard from The Honorable Juliette Cuthbert Flynn MP, State Minister in the Ministry for Health and Wellness of Jamaica.
Panelists discussed the important influence that nurses have on promoting good health and access to healthcare in communities regardless of a person’s age, nationality, gender, or income level.
With nurses making up approximately 60 percent of the health workforce worldwide, ways of tapping into the collective potential of nurses to tackle global issues such as climate change was the core theme of the second session.
Dr. Patricia Butterfield, Professor Emeritus, Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, Washington State University, USA, presented the key recommendations from The BMJ’s (British Medical Journal) new report, Nursing’s pivotal role in global climate action.
These include how the sheer volume of nurses, the high trust placed in them by communities, and their physical proximity to those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change – such as climate-sensitive diseases like malaria and dengue fever – put nurses in a position to disseminate climate change messages effectively and drive their acceptance.
The third session of the event addressed another global challenge, that of digitization, and the urgent need for nurses and the nursing profession to catch up with the rapid pace of digital advancement worldwide.
Dr. Richard Booth from Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing, Western University, Canada, presented the key findings of BMJ’s latest report, How the nursing profession should adapt for a digital future, and advised that nursing must begin immediate transformation into a digitally enabled profession that can respond to the complex global challenges now facing health systems and society.
The event sessions provided a unique opportunity for young nurses all over the world to engage in dialogue with experts and report authors, ask questions, share their personal experiences, and offer insight.
In closing the event, WISH announced a USD 1,000 award for the winner of each of the two newly launched Nursing Now Challenges, as part of the Nursing Now Challenge Global Solutions Initiative.
The challenges call on nurses around the world to propose innovative ways for the nursing community to combat climate change, as well as design an initiative that helps them better navigate an increasingly digitized world.
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