Present at the CMO/CNO meeting in Rome, on 6 October 2014, Ms Grete Christensen, President of the Danish Nurses Organisation (a member of EFN), and representing EFN in this event, was invited to speak on prevention and innovative models for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which represents one of the major health problems in Europe. She took this opportunity to stress that “even if frequently restricted in their scope of practice and not considered key players for coordinating health and social care pathways, nurses, as frontline staff, representing a first contact for patients, and being involved in all stages of care (from prevention to provision of palliative care), can play a major role in managing COPD”. Ms Christensen also highlighted that “there is increasing evidence that interventions led by nurses can contribute to an improvement of patient outcomes, particularly linked to the early discharge schemes and to self-management, allowing patients to stay longer at home”. However, a change of both mind-set and health systems is required in order to allow nurses to further strengthen their role and to deliver safe and high quality cost-effective patient care in the future.
The EFN General Secretary, Mr Paul De Raeve, in the morning session shared with the CNOs the EFN perspectives on the implementation of the Directive 2013/55/EU on the Mutual Recognition of Professional Qualifications. This was a great opportunity to discuss the EFN Competency Framework that will facilitate the development of the Delegated Act to reinforce the implementation of Art 31 of Directive 2013/55/EU and the update of Annexe V, knowing that the EFN and its member associations are engaging actively with key regulatory, educator (FINE) and nursing specialist groups in this process.
Finally, the EFN President, Ms Marianne Sipilä, was invited to talk on Primary Care on 7 October. She explained that the EFN is pleased to see that several European initiatives on primary care are seeing the light. The main drivers for such a change are ageing of the population and workforce, increased patient needs and reducing number of resources. Given the high relevance of this topic for nurses, the EFN has collaborated with the Commission Expert Group that developed the Opinion on Primary Care and raised some concerns and challenges with traditional models of healthcare, and health systems still managed by the old medical model with excessive focus on specific diseases and treatment, rather than on the care process, the shift to an integrated care model and prevention, and health promotion measures. As such, and in order to effectively reduce the needs of care at the hospitals and provide more services in the community, a whole-system approach change is needed. In order to make this happen, the EFN and its national members are keen to work with the Chief Nursing Officers’ for the further design and implementation of primary care models across Europe. Interesting examples from Toscana, Scotland and Finland were discussed in this event. More exchange of views within the profession and between professions are needed to strengthen nursing and primary care. We look forward to the Latvia EU presidency to keep primary care high on the political agenda.