NLN & International Council of Nurses (ICN) Announce Collaboration to Advance Global Investment in Nursing Education

NLN & International Council of Nurses (ICN) Announce Collaboration to Advance Global Investment in Nursing Education

New Initiative Revitalizes Committee of Experts to Share Best Practices & Opportunities in Nursing Education Worldwide

 

Washington, DC — Two leading professional organizations in nursing, the National League for Nursing and the International Council of Nurses (ICN), have teamed up to promote an initiative to prioritize broad-scale investment in nursing education: the ICN Education Experts Advisory Committee (ICNEE). The new committee is a reformulation of a group originally established by the League and ICN in 2009 to share best practices and opportunities in nursing education worldwide, under ICN auspices.

The current iteration of the ICNEE will aim to create a plan to scale up the education of nurses around the world and ensure that the nursing workforce of the future is prepared to meet whatever challenges lie ahead. 

One immediate focus of the ICNEE will be its role in helping to shape the thinking around the soon-to-be-published second edition of the World Health Organization’s State of the World’s Nurses Report, produced in collaboration with the ICN. The ICNEE will encourage putting nursing education front and center in the publication’s messaging and content.

The ICNEE is to be housed within the NLN Institute for Diversity and Global Initiatives, under the leadership and management of Dr. Sandra Davis, deputy director of the NLN | Walden University College of Nursing Institute for Social Determinants of Health and Social Change. Dr. Davis will also serve for the next three years as the ICNEE’s chair.

The committee’s membership will consist of 14 individuals, 12 of whom will be chosen, based on ICN recommendations, to represent each of the World Health Organization’s six regions. They will be joined by two at-large members with expertise in global public health and nursing education.

NLN Chair Kathleen Poindexter, PhD, RN, CNE, ANEF, interim associate dean for academic affairs and assistant dean for undergraduate programs and faculty development at Michigan State University in Lansing, lauded the decision to relaunch the ICNEE. “In a time of extraordinary public health disasters, there is a dire need for resources that advance the education of nurses, our most trusted, frontline health care professionals.”

NLN President and CEO Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN, said, “With the new ICNEE, we may maximize the ICN’s historic role in disseminating knowledge and supporting the implementation of educational best practices. Additionally, the ICNEE will aid in addressing the well-being and professional development of nurse educators throughout the world. The need to recruit and retain qualified nurse faculty remains a root cause of the persistent worldwide shortage of nurses, one we hope the ICNEE will work to mitigate.”

ICN President, Dr. Pamela Cipriano, said the ICNEE would extend the impact of the ICN and National League for Nursing’s educational activities and initiatives. “The ICN was set up in 1899 to ensure that nurses around the world were united with each other and cooperating to raise the standards of nursing education and professional ethics so that nurses could bring their professional knowledge and skill to meet patients’ needs everywhere,” she said.

Dr. Cipriano added, “Reinvigorating the ICNEE will help us to continue with that noble cause for the benefit of individuals, families, and communities around the globe. I look forward to working with the committee once it is established, and I am sure it will make an important contribution to our shared goals of improving nursing education and recruiting many more nurse educators, who are so vital to this endeavor.”

The new ICNEE will be officially announced during NLN’s Education Summit, September 28-30 at National Harbor near Washington, DC. For more information about the National League for Nursing, visit NLN.org.

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