Nursing Now Campaign Report – “Agents of change: the story of the Nursing Now campaign!”
The Nursing Now Campaign just launched its final report “Agents of change: the story of the Nursing Now campaign”, which shows nurses and their allies, united in the world, are increasing their influence and building a platform to improve healthcare for the future.
Aiming to improve health by raising the profile and status of nursing worldwide, the campaign objective was to encourage activity and enterprise at every level – from the most local to the global, in areas as advanced practice, research capacity, leadership development, education and investment.
After 3 years of existence, we can say that the campaign reached some achievements as: the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife (2020); publication of the first ever State of the World’s Nursing report (together with WHO and ICN); and, together with Nursing Now partners, raising the profile and contribution of nursing within global policies in areas such as universal health coverage, non-communicable diseases, gender equality and primary care.
One of the themes of the initial programme of work of the campaign was “Evidence and research” – with the campaign committed to sharing research and evidence so that by the end of 2020, there would be ongoing robust evidence available to policy and decision makers on the impact of nursing and where it can have most effect. The research papers from the data collected by the research team are being processed and should be soon released. However, further research will be needed in 3-5 years to estimate its impact on health through its influence on nurses and policy makers.
“Once Nursing Now came into the picture, the role that nurses could play in multiple areas, from advanced clinical care, to primary care, to rehabilitation and palliation, to research, all of these became quite emphasised and I think that brought much greater visibility”. Professor Srinath Reddy, Public Health Foundation for India, board member interview, 2021
Finally, the report sets out a specific set of key actions for five groups that have a fundamental role to play in the future in improving global health. However, this is only possible if action is taken now by those sectors whose priority it is to achieve improvements in population health, health equity, social inclusion, planetary health, gender equality and economic growth. For nursing and nurses, it can no longer be ‘business as usual’ but nursing included in all policies.