Partnership Coordinators:
Mary O’Dowd (Institute of Community Health Nursing, Ireland)
Global Partners (Country-Based Public Health Nurses and Nursing Bodies)
Goals:
- Links will be established with the identified developing countries who wish to become involved in the network.
- Mechanisms to ensure that the nurses in these countries are able to participate as fully as possible in the network will be set up.
- The feedback from the intra-national and-continental discussions will be used to provide the framework for the governance of the network and for the setting up of the various interest groups.
- It is anticipated that a steering group will be established and tasked to produce a business plan by the end of year one.
- The Institute believes that it will be important to take time during this set up phase to achieve as much consensus as possible between the partner countries.
Background:
Public Health nurses who have come together over a six year period have recognised the need for the sharing of research and practice between countries and continents. They have particularly recognised and acknowledge their responsibility to share with and learn from the developing countries. The discussions in forming a global network of public health nurses started six years ago 2009 in Oslo at the first International Public Health Nurse conference. Prior to the Galway conference in 2013 there had been five further meetings: Durban, Minnesota, Malta, Japan and Melbourne, where the need for a network was explored. Three of these meeting took place under the auspices of the International Council of Nursing. The International Council of Nursing (ICN) whilst recognising the need for such a network has indicated that they are unable at the present to support its development.
100 public health nurses throughout the world have expressed an interest in supporting the formation of the Global Network. However, to date the network has been ad hoc and there is now a recognition that the group needs to become more formalized if it is to succeed in enhancing public health nursing and health visiting practice throughout the world. The Irish Institute of Community Health Nursing has agreed to take the lead in establishing a more formal network. One of the challenges will be to ensure that individual public health nurses and health visitors actively participate in the forum.
The launch of the Global Network for Public Health Nursing at the Institute of Community Health Nursing Annual Conference in Dublin, 2014.
