In late February, more than 225 nurses, students and healthcare advocates from around the world gathered at Nashville’s Loews Vanderbilt Hotel for the first ever Nursing Leadership in Global Health (NLGH) Conference. Coordinated by Vanderbilt University’s Institute for Global Health, the two-day symposium included representatives from 14 countries including Uganda, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.
The overarching issues facing nursing today are echoed in this month’s annual celebration of National Nurses Week, May 6-12, which carries the theme ‘Nurses Leading the Way.’
A Global Need
Conference coordinator Carol A. Etherington, MSN, RN, associate director of Community Health Initiatives for the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health, said the idea surfaced about 18 months ago with the original intent to host a small summit of 25-50 global health nurses.
“The thought was to initiate a debate about how nurses, as a group, are continually the people most often implementing programs, yet least often involved in discussions about how to design and carry out implementation on a local, national and international level,” Etherington recalled.
As plans progressed, the idea of assembling an unprecedented group of global health experts seemed amiss without the presence of all those eager to tackle issues hands-on … from recent nursing grads to retired RNs.
“Across the career spectrum we really wanted to engage as many people as possible,” Etherington said.
Conference Objectives
According to the NLGH, nurses deliver 90 percent of healthcare to the world; yet finding them at the upstream end of decision-making and planning is an exception rather than the norm. Etherington said the objective was to focus on vulnerable populations in resource-limited settings — typically the greatest challenge for the global healthcare workforce — by strengthening the presence of nursing in creating health policy and programming.
To that end, conference goals included:
Discussing complex and competing forces that influence the health of individuals and populations around the world;
Identifying challenges, barriers, and solutions to increasing nurse leadership and integration in decision-making;
Describing essential components for successful collaboration with traditional and non-traditional partners to impact policy; and
Developing pathways to lead to effective advocacy and activism in improving health of patients and populations.
14 Countries, 1 Common Thread
“We planned sessions based on areas we thought were priority,” Etherington said. “We didn’t want to open up a vast menu of issues but wanted to focus on a lot of paths always going back to same thought of, ‘How do we improve healthcare of the population by increasing and elevating the voice of nursing?’ People got that. While they may have attended a session on human rights or healthcare workplace issues, it always came back to same message that it’s important to push the envelope — to voice a louder voice and be a stronger patient advocate.”
Speakers from across the globe presented lectures on leadership and management, policy advocacy and field engagement. Internationally recognized speakers included Tennessee Senator Bill Frist, MD, and global nursing advocate Her Royal Highness Princess Muna Al-Hussein of Jordan, accompanied by her country’s leadership nursing team. The interdisciplinary panel included health advocates both in and outside the field of medicine – leading lawyers, global health experts, and representatives from groups like Save the Children.
“While we had exceptional speakers, we also had exceptional attendees, including a lot of people in the audience who could have been keynote speakers themselves,” Etherington noted. “The vast majority saw this as a uniquely different approach to carrying out patient care.”
Results Please
Measuring results of a global conference addressing the world’s greatest health challenges is no easy feat. While a post-event survey gave organizers high marks both in content and CEU quality, the goal was to begin a discussion that each attendee would continue back home.
“Before even talking to potential speakers, we looked at how we would measure success, as this was the first time this type of event has happened with this particular focus area,” said Amy Richardson, MPH, program manager for the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health. “We didn’t expect to walk away with a 10-point action plan. Outcomes were less about how many people came from where or what fields they represented. We would consider it successful if attendees went away having had rich conversation about the issues at hand, especially how to become advocates for this population. Our goal was to really get people thinking and working outside of their comfort zones and to encourage collaboration and innovation.”
Networking was hands-down the greatest outcome, said Etherington, who has already received reports of collaboration among attendees from Africa and the Middle East.
“That is one of those real pluses we hoped would happen, and we feel it has in a way we could never have imagined,” she noted.
While each attendee brought a unique worldview, each also recognized true change in global health requires more than lofty goals, rhetoric and words.
“Making a change requires effort to establish relationships and to have people see the problem as their own communal priority, not someone else’s,” Etherington concluded.