DECISIONS MADE in the health service without the contribution of nursing intelligence are made “in a vacuum”, a nursing and midwifery conference was told yesterday.
President of the Irish Association of Directors of Nursing and Midwifery Irene O’Connor, said the association wanted to be in a position to contribute to finding solutions in the health service.
“This requires . . . we be positioned so that we can . . . inform and influence decisions which, made with the best of intentions, must be recognised as being made within a vacuum if nursing intelligence is not contributing to them,” she said.
The organisation’s annual conference in Athlone included contributions from Sheila O’Malley, chief nurse at the Department of Health and Children, Dr Barry White, national director of clinical care and quality with the Health Service Executive (HSE) and Dr Paul Kavanagh, specialist in public health medicine. Ms O’Connor told delegates that the association would have to show great leadership if the Irish nation was to regain trust in the health service.
This had been eroded by recent damning reports she said, including the Lourdes’s inquiry and the O’Malley report. She called for a central role for nurses in HSE structures.
“The contributions of nursing leaders on issues such as governance, patient safety and experience are of vital importance and must be explicitly presented at strategic and operational levels,” she said. The new structures should establish a sense of purpose for senior nurse leadership and an effective leadership voice for nurses on behalf of patients and the profession, she said.
Addressing Minister for Health Mary Harney, who spoke at the conference yesterday, Ms O’Connor said association members would rise to the challenges faced as leaders of their profession and would put their “vast and varied experience and education” at the service of the public and “contribute to finding solutions”.
