Dispatch from Melbourne: A Significant Loss for International Council of Nurses?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Melbourne, Australia Melbourne, Australia

So this week I’ve traveled halfway across the world to Melbourne, Australia, where the International Council of Nurses (ICN) is holding its 25th quadrennial meeting. Nearly 4,000 nurses from 134 countries are expected to attend. There’s a mind-boggling number of concurrent sessions—there must be about 60 sessions each hour, offering glimpses into various  international  health problems and solutions from nurses. Chinese Nursing Association at ICN 2013 Chinese Nursing Association at ICN 2013

A river of nurses. Sunday morning was the opening plenary. I left my hotel at 8:30 am to walk to the convention center along the Yarra River, which runs through this very metropolitan city. I began as a fairly solitary walker, but was soon joined by other walkers, mostly women, all carrying the same ICN2013 conference bag, all walking purposefully in the same direction. We were mostly middle-aged and dressed in sensible walking shoes and “business casual” clothes, and must have looked like a well-dressed walking club to those biking and strolling past. I was quickly reminded that, for all our differences in language and customs, we’re all pretty much alike.

Missing this year from the Congress of Nursing Representatives, however, is the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which represents nurses from the United Kingdom. The RCN was suspended for failing to pay all of its dues and now is expected to withdraw […]

2018-03-28T10:32:41-04:00May 20th, 2013|nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Farewell to Nurses Week 2011

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

So Nurses Week 2011 has come and gone. I was in Malta at the start of it—at the 2011 International Council of Nurses (ICN) meeting in Valletta—and in New York City at the end of it.  From two disparate locations, there was a singular thread: nurses seeking information to improve the lives of their patients and themselves.

In Malta, there were over 2,000 nurses from all over the world. Some participated as their nation’s representatives in the Council of National Representatives (see an earlier post describing ICN activities); some came for the educational sessions, or to share experiences or initiatives that have made a difference in the lives of nurses or patients. (I wrote about two of these moving stories.) The conference also served as a reminder of how much I regret not being fluent in another language—four years of high school French and a French-speaking grandfather helped a little, but there’s nothing like meeting colleagues who speak two or three languages (their own native language, English, and usually a bit of another one) to make you realize how necessary it is to be multilingual in today’s world.

On one day, I was eating lunch with colleagues from Brazil and Belgium. […]

2016-11-21T13:12:58-05:00May 18th, 2011|career, nursing perspective|3 Comments
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