The EFN is now an official partner of the World Health Organisation Regional Office for Europe. This marks an opportunity for both stakeholders to work together on activities of relevance for the nursing profession.
The EFN and its members also congratulates Dr Hans Kluge and extends his appreciation towards all the work that he has done for the nurses and the nursing profession. Dr Kluge had been nominated as the new WHO Regional Director for Europe at the annual meeting of the WHO European Region’s governing body. “The objective is to strengthen WHO/Europe as a centre of excellence to give concrete help to countries on concrete issues, to work with determination and modesty to increase the impact at the country level, and to decrease the burden on countries – not least the small countries”, he said during his address to delegates at the 69th session of the WHO Regional Committee for Europe.
Some joint work between the EFN and the WHO has already taken place. For example, the EFN has let the WHO know its position on the Health System Reform within the Member States of the WHO European Region, on the WHO Ministerial Conference on Health Systems, on the EU nursing workforce, on skills and competences, and on the to the Consultation on the WHO Independent High-Level Commission on Non-communicable diseases Draft Report
Moreover, during the 69th WHO Regional Committee for Europe, two video statements by the EFN were made available on primary care and digitalisation.
The EFN Secretary General, Paul De Raeve, is part of Roster of Experts of the WHO Digital Health Technical Advisory Group. This group harness the power of digital health to help achieve WHO’s triple billion goals as set out in our General Programme of Work, and Sustainable Development Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.
The year 2020 also marks the opportunity to celebrate the contribution of nurses to our healthcare systems and their patients. For that reason, the WHO has designated 2020 as the “Year of the Nurse and Midwife”, in honour of the 200th birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale. In parallel, there is the Nursing Now Campaign, of which the EFN the European lead. Nursing Now is a three-year campaign (2018-2020) to improve health globally by raising the status of nursing. It supports country-level dissemination and policy dialogue around the State of the World’s Nursing report.
At the European level, the EFN as Nursing Now European regional leadership group, focuses on nurses’ support to the current political policy driver across Europe (i.e., the European Pillar of Social Rights) building on 20 key principles (with a focus on those principles that EFN Members have committed to), and structured around three categories: equal opportunities and access to the labour market; fair working conditions, social protection and inclusion.
Lastly, the EFN works representing the nursing profession in the international projects it is part of. The same will apply when at meetings at the WHO. This is the case with the two EU-funded projects on Electronic Health Records InteropEHRate and Smart4Health In these, the EFN is fostering the role of nurses as end-users of new digital health tools.