January 8, 2020 | NLN CEO Update on The Year of the Nurse

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January 8, 2020  |  XXIV, Issue Number 1
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Happy New Year, colleagues. I hope your holidays were joyful. With this first Member Update of the new year – and the new decade – I hope I can inspire you to dream and report for duty, just as I urged in my CEO address at our most recent Education Summit this past September in Washington, DC. There I introduced some of the worldwide happenings for nursing in 2020 and reported that it is time to dream for our future.
Look Back at 2019

Before we delve deeper, let me call your attention to an op-ed column by Nicholas Kristof in the December 28 New York Times, “This Has Been the Best Year Ever.” Kristof points out that “2019 was probably the year in which children were least likely to die, adults were least likely to be illiterate and people were least likely to suffer excruciating and disfiguring diseases.” He notes that in 1950, 27 percent of all children died by age 15, and now that number is 4 percent, with diseases “like polio, leprosy, river blindness and elephantiasis … on the decline.” Although Kristof does not mention nurses, we can be certain that it is nurses and midwives worldwide who have largely contributed to these positive trends. Nursing is the glue that holds health care together.

Celebrate Nursing in 2020

By now you undoubtedly know that 2020, when we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, has been designated the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. This designation by the World Health Organization (WHO) is a substantive one. Since this past summer, WHO has been collecting data and holding policy development workshops that will result in a State of the World’s Nursing report to “describe how the nursing workforce will help deliver Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and highlight areas for policy development for the next three to five years.”

DATES & DEADLINES
The report, which will be launched on World Health Day on April 7, will help “drive investment in [the] nursing and midwifery workforces.” Implicit in this work is recognition of nursing’s essential role in contributing to WHO’s Triple Billion Goals: “Ensuring 1 billion more people benefit from universal health coverage, 1 billion more are protected from health emergencies, and 1 billion improve their overall health.” 
 
Recognize Nursing Champions

As nurses and nurse educators, let us celebrate the work nurses do globally as inspiration for the work we do to educate the next generation of nurses. In her editorial for the January-February 2020 issue of the NLN research journal Nursing Education Perspectives, Dr. Joyce Fitzpatrick offers 10 ways schools of nursing here in the United States can use the celebration of the Year of the Nurse and Midwife as a “launch pad for changing the image of nursing locally, nationally, and globally, to provide the public with an even more positive view of the most trusted profession.”
Joyce tells that us that “now is our time to shine our light” and offers 10 suggestions that are readily achievable for schools of nursing. These include recognition for those in the community who support nursing education, publicizing the work of faculty and students in addressing the WHO Sustainable Development Goals, and initiating a scholarship drive to support the education of future nurses. Importantly, she urges that we teach the art of storytelling “for empowering nurses and recognizing the day-to-day contributions of nurses everywhere, for all patients and families.” Bring Joyce’s editorial, “Celebrating 2020: The Year of the Nurse and Midwife,” to your next faculty meeting for inspiration as you discuss ways to educate the public about nursing and “propel us toward greater leadership in health care.”

RECENT NLN NEWS
2020 will be a great year for the Nursing profession, for nurse educators and for the people we serve. There is the Nightingale Challenge, which asks health care employers around the world to provide training in leadership for young nurses and midwives and demonstrate that these are exciting and rewarding careers. There is Nursing Now, a three-year global collaboration of the WHO and the International Council of Nurses, and Nursing Now USA, headed by the American Nursing Association,  the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, and the University of Washington School of Nursing. And, of course, we are looking forward to the work on the Future of Nursing 2020-2030 from the National Academy of Medicine.
 
When Florence Nightingale defied her family expectations that she marry and take her expected role in British society and chose instead to study and practice nursing, she could never have imagined the world of nursing in 2020. We owe so much to the giants who have come before us. And yes, we face enormous challenges today, colleagues, but what opportunities lie ahead. We are part of a great global collective of nurses – nurses who advance the health of our nation and the global community – and we make a difference. Let us dare to dream together.  

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