Public Health Wales supports Nursing Now campaign
Public Health Wales is playing a key role in the rollout of the Nursing Now Cymru Wales campaign, which was officially launched at an event in Cardiff on 29 March.
The launch event marked the start of the Wales leg of the Nursing Now campaign, a three-year global campaign being run in collaboration with the International Council of Nurses and the World Health Organization.
Nursing Now will run to the end of 2020 – the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth and a year when nurses will be celebrated worldwide.
This coincides with the World Health Organization dedicating 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and Midwife, expected to be endorsed at the World Assembly in May this year.
The campaign aims are:
1.Greater investment in improving education, professional development, standards, regulation and employment conditions for nurses.
2. Increased and improved dissemination of effective and innovative practice in nursing.
3. Greater influence for nurses and midwives on global and national health policy, as part of broader efforts to ensure health workforces are more involved in decision-making.
4. More nurses in leadership positions and more opportunities for development at all levels.
5. More evidence for policy and decision makers about where nursing can have the greatest impact, what is stopping nurses from reaching their full potential and how to address these obstacles.
Rhiannon Beaumont-Wood, Director of Quality, Nursing and Allied Health Professionals for Public Health Wales, was among the speakers at the Nursing Now Wales launch.
Rhiannon said: “I’m very excited to see Wales officially joining the global Nursing Now campaign. Nurses and midwives are at the heart of most health teams, playing a crucial role in improving and transforming health services, promoting health and preventing and reducing the impact of disease, together with ensuring that the care that is delivered is compassionate and of a high quality standard, which our patients and citizens should expect to receive.
“Through supporting this campaign in Wales, we can both acknowledge the valuable role played by nurses and midwives and raise the profile and status of nursing and midwifery.”
A steering group led by Public Health Wales on behalf of Welsh Government, has been established to take forward the Nursing Now Cymru Wales campaign and to ensure that progress on the key themes identified for Wales is made.
The themes are underpinned by the triple impact model identified in A Report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health a pre cursor document which led to the Nursing Now campaign. The Triple Impact Model identifies Better Health, Stronger Economies and Greater Gender Equality
The identified Nursing Now Cymru Wales themes are:
- Building resilience and promoting wellbeing in our students and registrants.
- Increasing and Improving dissemination of effective and innovative practice in nursing to drive consistency in system wide adoption.
- Strengthening and building leadership and influencing capability at all levels.
- To actively encourage and increase diversity in nursing and midwifery to positively influence inclusion of underrepresented groups promoting social and economic developments.
- Preparing students and supporting nurses and midwives to recognise their role responsibility in contributing to prevention, improving individual and population health outcomes.
These themes align to our Welsh policy context for health and social care, A Healthier Wales and Train Work Live.
More information on Nursing Now is available at www.nursingnow.org