ICN President reaffirms close links with WHO and joint commitment to support and sustain the nursing and healthcare workforce
The International Council of Nurses’ new president Dr Pamela Cipriano met with World Health Organization Director General Dr Tedros 0n Monday to confirm the continuing close collaboration between the two organisations.
Dr Cipriano said the highly successful meeting included lengthy discussions about ICN’s new report, Sustain and Retain in 2022 and Beyond which focuses on the effects of the pandemic on the global nursing workforce as well as on other areas of mutual concern, including nurses’ safety, staffing levels, preventing violence, vaccine equity and ethical migration practices.
Dr Cipriano said: “This was an important opportunity to recognise that we are totally committed to working together, as exemplified by our support of WHO’s Global Strategic Directions for Nursing and Midwifery, and our most recent report on sustaining and retaining the nursing workforce, which articulates all of these worrying issues.”
She said there was also a discussion about the upcoming ‘TRIAD’ meetings in May between WHO, the ICN and the International Confederation of Midwives, and about updating the State of the World’s Nursing report because of its critical importance to understanding the attrition from the workforce that has occurred since the start of the pandemic.
“We need to understand what the internal pressures are likely to be as we address the current and future shortage of nurses worldwide, which are being made worse by the pandemic.” The conversation between Dr Cipriano and Dr Tedros also covered efforts to encourage countries to follow WHO’s code on international recruitment, and how ICN and WHO are in alignment on workforce issues.
Dr Cipriano presented Dr Tedros with a copy of ICN’s newly revised Code of Ethics as well as the new report and said she would be keen to reconvene with him soon to demonstrate the importance of the joint work between the ICN and WHO.
ICN Chief Executive Officer Howard Catton, who was also at the meeting, said: “In our discussions with Dr Tedros he recognised the importance of a consistent, regular global focus on health workforce and that all of WHO’s ambitions around primary health, non-communicable diseases and ageing require a strong and active nursing workforce. We agreed that all roads to a healthier global population have as their foundation a strong, well-educated and healthy nursing workforce. ”
Dr Cipriano said she was glad to hear Dr Tedros agree that not enough had been done for nurses and other healthcare workers during the pandemic. “Joining the voices of nurses together with those of the WHO in a collective call for action will help to support and sustain the nursing workforce as we continue our way through the pandemic and beyond,” she concluded.
Click here for the ICN-CGFNS joint report Sustain and Retain in 2022 and Beyond.
Download the communique here