Raise profile, status of nursing and midwifery to improve health, promote gender equity, strengthen economies: Lord Nigel Crisp

Jun 24, 2019

 

NEW DELHI, 24 June 2019: Sending out a loud message that nursing and midwifery matters, Lord Nigel Crisp, Co-Chair, UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health today said that the nurses will play a much bigger role in the future and raising their profile will improve health globally.

 

Speaking at a pre-launch meeting with the Indian Healthcare industry and nursing leaders- 'Nightingale Challenge: India Leaders Global Campaign Discussio' organized by FICCI, Lord Crisp, who heads the Nursing Now global campaign to improve nursing, said that development of nurses not only improves the health but also promotes gender equity and strengthens the economies around the world. TheNightingale Challenge will be formally launched by Lord Nigel Crisp in Singapore on Friday.

 

"The aim of Nursing Now is to improve health globally by raising the profile and status of nursing. Stop nursing being invisible as it sometimes is or being taken for granted. Raise the profile, have more people and more leadership," he said.

 

Lord Crisp, formerly Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS) England, said nurses will play bigger role in the future in nurse-based and nurse-led clinics, mainly for noncommunicable diseases like diabetes and dementia. He said he is seeing rise of more specialist nurses and more advanced nurse practitioners even in India.

 

Nursing Now, which was launched 15 months ago in collaboration with International Council of Nurses and the World Health Organization, is a 3-year global campaign and has 282 regional/ national local groups in 89 countries.

 

On the first anniversary of Nursing Now, the group will launch Nightingale Challenge 2020 in Singapore on Friday. The challenge is about helping develop young nurses and midwives around the world, giving them the opportunity to become even more effective practitioners and advocates and leaders.

 

Ms Lisa Bayliss-Pratt, Program Director, Nightingale Challenge and Chief Nurse, Health Education England said, "Our challenge is to health employers throughout the world to identify some young nurses and midwives in their organizations and give them some development opportunity in 2020."

 

Year 2020 happens to be the 200th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale,considered by many as the founder of modern nursing. WHO has declared 2020 as the 'Year of the Nurse and Midwife'.

 

Nightingale Challenge aims to have at least 20,000 nurses and midwives aged 35 and under benefiting from this in 2020, with at least 1,000 employers taking part.

 

"By showing that the employers are investing in development of their young nurses and midwives, they are sending a strong signal to the community and this will help them to retain their nurses, which has been a problem," Bayliss-Pratt added.