Source: School of Nursing
Written by: Zheng Jing
Edited by: Wang Dongmei
Nearly 10,000 nurses from more than 130 countries attended the 2017 International Council of Nurses (ICN) Congress in Barcelona, Spain from 27th May to 1st June. The Chinese Nursing Association (CNA) organized nearly 300 Chinese nurses to attend the Congress. Among them, Professor You Liming, Professor Zhang Meifen, Lecturer Zheng Jing and two master's students from the School of Nursing of Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), Principal Nurse Fang Haiyun from the First Affiliated Hospital of SYSU, and Associate Principal Nurse Chen Huali from the Third Affiliated Hospital of SYSU attended the Congress.
From left to right: Lecturer Zheng Jing, Associate Principal Nurse Chen Huali, Professor You Liming, Professor Zhang Meifen and Principal Nurse Fang Haiyun
Professor You Liming was the only Chinese representative among the 21 keynote speakers invited by the ICN Congress. She made a speech on the topic of “The Development of Nursing Education and Workforce in China: An Educational Perspective on Safe Staffing to Transform Care”. Starting with the statement that educating sufficient and high quality nurses is the premise for safe staffing, she introduced the development of the nursing education system in China. With the national data, she showed to the audience the trend of the expanding scale and improving educational-level composition of nursing education, as well as the rapid growing nursing workforce in the last 20 years. Based on the significant achievements in the increase of the nursing workforce, from 1.2 million nurses in 2002 to 3.5 million in 2016 nationwide, she explained the future development goals for number of nurses and hospital nurse staffing levels stated in the Blueprint for Nursing Development in China (year 2016–2020), and pointed out that the nursing profession will play a more and more important role in achieving the sustainable development goal of "Healthy China 2030". Furthermore, with the research findings of her team and colleagues in leading nursing schools in China, she emphasized that efforts from educational sector, healthcare system and the government are called for to achieve safe staffing. That is to say, both supply sufficient nursing manpower and strategies to retain nurses are needed, which include educating sufficient and high quality nurses, adequate staffing in clinical settings and cultivating a good nursing work environment, and promoting the public to recognize the importance of nurses in healthcare to safeguard nurses providing high quality and safety nursing care to patients.
Professor You's speech got many positive feedbacks from the audience, and the achievements in Chinese nursing was very impressive. In the congress, a master's student of Professor Zhang Meifen, Ms Li Jiangzhen, gave an oral presentation in a concurrent session on "Functioning and the Influencing Factors of Patients Undergoing Hip/Knee Joint Replacement: A Longitudinal Study", and a poster on "Correlation between Oral Chemotherapy Adherence and Health Belief in Colorectal Cancer Patients: A Longitudinal Study".
The theme of the 2017 ICN Congress was "nurses at the forefront transforming care", which fully demonstrated the achievements of nurses participating in the decision-making for health policy and promoting the development of human health worldwide. It was the largest number of Chinese delegates in ICN Congress since the CNA returned to the ICN in 2013. During the Congress, the CNA received an Innovation Award from the ICN, and Dr Wu Ying, the Deputy Secretary General of CNA, was elected as a board member of the ICN, showing the courage and confidence of Chinese nurses to play an important role in the international nursing arena.
