Neuroscience Nursing Celebrating International Nurses Day

Its has been over 200 years since Florence Nightingale was born on May 12th and nurses around the world continue to commemorate this important day. May 12th is a day when we need to look back as well as looking forward to how our generation can sculpt, improve and change nursing. We need to look forward, exploring ways to strengthen our profession and build capacity for the future. It is the graduates and students of today and their students that will be the next generation of nurses, and the generation that will be caring for us and our families. This next generation are entering nursing in a new era of technology and artificial intelligence and face even bigger challenges than many of us did when indispensable items such as automatic blood pressure machines and intravenous fluid pumps became available. As a profession we embraced these technological advances, but we held onto our core skills such as taking manual pulses and talking to the patients.

We do have the strength as a profession and we need to advocate for patient centred interventions, and the improvement of healthcare systems. Having had the opportunity to participate in ‘A Vision for Global Neurosurgery – Boston Declaration 2025’ neuroscience nursing paper in this edition has been a remarkable opportunity. It is absolutely vital that nurses have a voice in these initiatives as we are the key health providers that can drive transformation and change. Activities like this can reenergise us and they provide the energy and direction to keep going.

Projects like the Boston Deceleration also offer the opportunity to present a collegial network and demonstrate our strength as a profession. However, they do require the collective strength of the neuroscience nursing community. So why you may ask are involvement in projects such as this important? They are important because they transcend political, geographical, economical and conflict zones. We can all make a difference if we present the skills that we have in a positive and proactive manner.

The wellbeing of the global nursing workforce is serious concern, nurses are facing burnout, endangerment to their lives and extreme fatigue. For those in geographically remote areas there is simply no back up or succession planning for nurses to be able to take leave, and for many working in metropolitan areas, nurses are often having their leave cancelled to cover chronic staff shortages. I think that it would be fair to say that there is a concerning and deepening crisis that is impacting the global nursing workforce.

Stand and be a neuroscience nurse and help to make changes that can and will have global impacts. Use international Nurses Day to invest in your own nursing, of those around you and of those afar. If we don’t make changes now, we will not be part of the future and we need to leave our legacy. We need to follow on in nursing tradition and carve a path for the next generation as there is nothing gained by blaming the generation before us and not taking the chance to say and change all the things we dream of.

Linda