At Least Once in Every Nursing Career: Final ICN Congress Recap
By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief
from Great Ocean Road in Australia
Here’s a final recap of my trip last week to the 25th quadrennial congress of the International Council of Nurses (ICN). (My previous posts on this year’s ICN events are here and here; there’s also a podcast of my interview with outgoing ICN president Rosemary Bryant.)
My final few days were busy with sessions as well as a meeting with some members of AJN’s International Advisory Board. Here are some highlights:
- Nurses and the Nazis. A session on ethics led by Australian nurse Linda Shields examined nursing in Nazi Germany and discussed how nurses might have rationalized participation in Nazi euthanasia and killing programs. She noted that aside from the usual “just following orders” mantra, obedience was tied to housing and livelihood, as well as to the belief that “the health of the volk (community) was more important than the health of the individual.” (The topic brings to mind our 2009 article, “The Third Reich, Nursing, and AJN” [abstract only], which made the case that “in the interest of promoting international cooperation and an image of nursing unity, AJN shirked its duty to hold […]