Nurses: A Voice to Lead—A Vision for Future Health Care

Subhash C Parija

Vice-Chancellor, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, Puducherry, India

Corresponding Author: Subhash C Parija, Vice-Chancellor, Sri Balaji Vidyapeeth, Puducherry, India, Phone: +91 413-2616766, e-mail: vc@sbvu.ac.in

How to cite this article: Parija SC. Nurses: A Voice to Lead—A Vision for Future Health Care. Pon J Nurs 2021;14(2):25.

Source of support: Nil

Conflict of interest: None

The International Council of Nurses (ICN) observes May 12—the birth date of Florence Nightingale—as the International Nurses Day (IND) worldwide. The theme for IND 2021 is “Nurses: a voice to lead—a vision for future health care.” This year IND is being observed in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic which depicts several vulnerabilities and shortcomings in the healthcare system across the globe. Despite this fact, nurses are continuing to render committed services. This pandemic highlights the extraordinary services, commitment, and fortitude that the nurses have been demonstrating worldwide. The pandemic has paved the way for many: an innovative approach to nursing care, which includes the use of robust technology and skills to provide assistance from a distance, and also finding innovative methods to integrate technology into the realms of practice that provides a holistic care.

The global countries are still suffering from large-scale transmission of the virus and imminent mortality. Due to the extra efforts taken, all the frontline health workers have been battling with this dreaded pandemic since over a year.¹ The vision for future health care calls for a partnership between the health system and other nodal sectors such as government and private to work in a concerted manner in order to build a “healthy and health creating society.” This essentially denotes that the social determinant of health needs to be addressed.² A whole range of issues need to be looked into to improve the health of the world’s population—nursing is central to every one of them. Nurses are considered vital to the efforts in addressing the various aspects of enabling health and building a healthier community.³

The call to action by ICN is vivid and strong for promoting investment in nursing and in the process ensuring that nurses have a cardinal role in decision-making, improving the education of the profession, and building and retaining the nursing workforce which is being echoed by international organizations and leaders.

The vision for future health care encompasses health systems that are sustainable, accessible, equitable, ethically based, and deemed appropriate and fit for the future. When this vision sees the light of the day, one would realize that nursing has indeed taken its rightful nodal place in healthcare plans and decision-making.⁴

REFERENCES

1. Jackson D, Commodore‐Mensah Y, Dale CM, Logsdon MC, Morin K, Noyes J, et al. International Nurses Day 2021: a vision for increased social justice in future healthcare. J Adv Nurs 2021. DOI: 10.1111/jan.14888.

2. Crisp N. Health is made at home, hospital are for repair: SALUS global knowledge exchange. 2020.

3. Campaign for action. Building healthier communities. 2021. Available from: http://campaignforaction.org/issue/building-healthier-communities [Accessed May 27, 2021].

4. https://www.icn.ch/what-we-do/campaigns/international-nurses-day [Accessed May 20, 2021].

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